Forget Me Not
by Tara1189
Summary: The press of curved silver against her cheek. Sharp. Blood pulsing under the skin. And beneath that, dizzying ecstasy, a kind of sickening thrill. The whisper of breath against her mouth, cool and metallic. "Wendy."
1. Prologue

**Summary: **The press of curved silver against her cheek. Sharp. Blood pulsing under the skin. And beneath that, dizzying ecstasy, a kind of sickening thrill. The whisper of breath against her mouth, cool and metallic. _"Wendy."_

**This is essentially the Hook/Wendy story I always wanted to read, but could never find (at least, to my satisfaction), so I eventually realised I would just have to write it myself. ****Props to anyone who catches the sneaky Jeeves and Wooster reference.**

* * *

**FORGET-ME-NOT**

_Seems that I have been held in some dreaming state  
A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake  
No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber  
Until I realized that it was you who held me under_

_Felt it in my fist, in my feet, in the hollows of my eyelids_  
_Shaking through my skull, through my spine and down through my ribs_

_No more dreaming of the dead, as if death itself was undone  
__No more calling like a crow for a boy, for a body in garden  
__No more dreaming like a girl so in love, so in love  
__No more dreaming like a girl so in love with the wrong world  
_

('Blinding', Florence and the Machine)

* * *

**- Prologue -**

"Tell me a story."

The candles by the window flickered brightly in the pooling darkness, dripping hot wax onto the wooden frame stiffened by age and lack of use. It had not been opened in many years.

Crinoline creased between delicate fingers. "What kind of story?"

"_You _know. The kind you used to tell us."

A reflection wavered in the black glass. A heart-shaped face, framed by looping coils of dark-gold hair, gazed back. Pale and ghostlike that face seemed, dimly illumined by the murky glow from the candles that appeared as two points of light in the dark window. Round white shoulders were framed by paler material of a silken gown that clung like a shroud to the soft figure reclining in the window-seat like a tragic muse, or a painting from a Tennyson poem.

But the ethereal image was only an illusion blurred out of proportion by the frosted glass and the darkness of the winter night that had crept into the nursery. In reality, Wendy Darling's fair complexion was flushed with the warmth of the room's interior, the dress she wore was no shroud, but a fashionable garment of ivory silk and ruffled lace purchased from Oxford Street, and the pearls glowing softly around her throat and in her ears were an extravagance that bespoke of an impending social engagement.

The haughty curve of those lips softened slightly. "A story…" she mused aloud, smoothing the lines of her skirts that glided like water against her skin, silken and cool. The condescending expression in her blue eyes was chased away momentarily by an awakening spirit that glimmered through the fringe of long lashes. "Let me think… yes, I know one…"

And, just as she had done seven years ago, Wendy leaned forward and began to speak in hushed tones, something she had not done since they were children. She was startled at how easily the words came to her, though rusted and long out of use as she traced the sound of them around her tongue. The edges of her heart suddenly stirred with an imagination that had long lain dormant. She spoke until the candle tips had burned to low blue flames on the smouldering wicks and the melted wax hardened on the window frame. She lingered over the words, drawing out the rich syllables and low cadences. Infusing the narrative with all the details to make it deliciously haunting. She had to try harder to make them shiver with fright, to remember those vocal touches that froze the blood and thawed the soul. Michael had always liked the ghost stories. John the adventure stories. And _she… _oh, it was always the tales of piracy that had stirred her blood…

"… And Bluebeard saw the key that she had dropped in her rush to escape that gruesome chamber, and he knew that she had discovered his secret – the bloody fate that his other wives had met. The key clutched in his ferocious hand and murder flashing like black fire in his wild eyes, he began to climb the stone stairs, up… up… up…"

She saw at once that she had lost her audience. John's dark eyes behind the glasses were absent, his ink-stained fingers drumming idly against the window frame, but he did not interrupt. Michael was less reticent. "It's _boring," _he said, tossing his auburn hair lazily from his brow. Michael was now a languid, long-boned youth of fifteen with drowsy blue eyes that were already beginning to have a devastating effect on girls. "I have a good story. I heard yesterday that Charlotte Evans kissed Bernard Higgins outside the post office on Fleet Street - can you imagine? Bertie Mason who brings the paper saw them, and _he_ told me they were there for _ten minutes_. Have you ever been kissed, Wendy?"

"Oh hush," she scolded in irritation, looking away so her brother would not see the heated blood burning beneath her cheeks. In fact she _had - _last week, at a party, Charles Quiller-Couch - grown bold on a couple of drinks and the loveliness of the night - had had the audacity to kiss her in the hall just before she left. The memory brought a confusing mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. It had been fumbling and awkward, his hands clumsy on her shoulders, the taste of cigarettes and crème de menthe on his mouth. She hadn't liked it at all. But he hadn't managed to steal the kiss that still lay hidden - tantalising yet elusive - on the corner of mouth. It glimmered, out of sight, waiting.

"Have it your way," said Michael carelessly. "You're always so severe, Wendy. I think a little kissing would do you good."

A strict reprimand rose to her lips, but Michael's words had drawn her mind inevitably back to a kiss before that – when she had been little more than a child, infatuated with a boy who neither wanted nor understood what she had so willingly offered in the fleeting press of her lips against his. So vivid still, the taste of salt and youth and fever; his firm, mocking mouth softening beneath her own as she clung to him with all the desperate intensity of love that a girl of thirteen could feel. She had been certain that her kiss would be left eternally on his lips and would have renounced it gladly – but he had not taken it and it remained with her still, locked away in that near-forgotten place with all her other dreams and missed opportunities.

"We should be going." John eased his tall, gangling frame from his cramped position on the floor, sweeping back the dark hair that fell untidily over his brow. He was taking the early train back to Oxford the next morning, and it was evident that he was impatient to return to the hallowed walls of academia at Balliol College. His visits from Oxford were becoming less and less frequent these days, and on the rare occasions he came home, he spent more time buried in Kant and Descartes than in the company of his family. It was with a slight pang of sadness that Wendy recalled the many nights they had curled up together with a novel open between them. Now he retreated to the philosophies of Burke while she delved alone into the adventure stories he had formerly devoured: _Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Heart of Darkness, Gulliver's Travels, The Jungle Book _and _She._

She rose, following her brothers into the hall, when something cold and wet pressed into the palm of her hand. She glanced down. Nana was almost completely blind now, and so unsteady on her legs she spent more time lying down than on her feet. Wendy ruffled the dog's ears, burying her face in that warm, soft fur. "Dear old Nan," she whispered. "I wish things could stay as they were." Nana whined in sympathy and licked her hand.

At twenty, Wendy knew she should be married. She just happened to be fortunate that her mother and father were somewhat subservient to her whims and had not yet forced her into the arms of someone she actively disliked. Men had reckoned little in her life thus far – the bolder lads who followed her with admiring eyes and came up to talk to her at Charing Cross were easily (and disdainfully) ignored. Though that period of grace had come to an end. All would soon change, sooner than she had wanted…

Only one boy had ever left a lasting impression on her mind and heart; a secret, treasured memory of flashing green eyes and mocking laughter. But the stately, well-mannered girl of twenty could not dwell on the childish dreams of her thirteen-year-old self. She was far too sensible, and life was far too busy to indulge in such wistful imaginings beyond the few stolen hours buried in the faded pages of her beloved novels. And even that fleeting pleasure was becoming harder to find time for thanks to the determined force with which her aunt thrust her into society. Wendy told herself firmly that imagination had no place in this age of enlightenment and rationality.

Yet beneath the polished, refined surface, there was always the lingering, unshakeable sense that there was more to life than the pristine etiquette of the Edwardian woman – this stifling existence of tedious social engagements, idle gossip, the stiff and unimaginative books opened by cold-chapped fingers within the narrow, confining walls of the girls' Finishing School. Her life was so placid and smooth, strait-laced and uninspired. Instinct whispered that life should be something imaginative, unbounded, limitless, full of excitement and danger and passion and suffering and _meaning -_

She envied John and Michael, who were free to engage in social and intellectual pursuits without the dreaded word of _husband _always hanging over them. It was boy's adventures that she curled up with in the window-seat, daring exploits of explorers and adventurers, not the well-thumbed copies of cheap romances that made their furtive way through the eager hands of the girls at Finishing school. Sometimes she allowed herself briefly to wonder how differently her life might have turned out had she been a boy and able to engage in a world that was not constrained in polite conversation and the stays of a corset.

"You need to be married, Wendy," Aunt Millicent had told the night before, after an evening glass of brandy that always had the unwelcome effect of loosening her tongue and sharpening her eyes. "You're becoming a burden on your parents. It's strange for a girl of your age to be unmarried; people will talk. Girls get queer notions if they're left alone for too long. Though thank goodness you were never one of those women who talked about _employment_."

Wendy said nothing. She had never confided (not even in John) her secret, barely-acknowledged desire to become a novelist. "Don't look like that, Wendy. There's no use putting on those airs if you end an old maid." Ringed fingers tilted her chin up to the light as her aunt scrutinized her carefully, eyes black and beady as those of a hovering bird of prey. "You're pretty enough, but too choosy, I think. Your father tells me the banker's boy wants you. You should take him. You will only get older and less pretty as time goes on."

Wendy shook away the unpleasant memory, refusing to acknowledge the nagging, persistent truth of it that turned her heart cold. Before going down the stairs after her brothers, she pushed open the door to the first bedroom.

Mary Darling's eyes were languid with the traces of fever, her complexion translucently pale, but still she smiled with serene tenderness at the sight of her daughter glowing with youth and beauty, though the expression was far too dignified and reserved for a girl of twenty. Wendy's unruly waves had been coiled and smoothed to satin curls, a few of which still provokingly fell forward, kissing her brow. The pearls gleamed in her ears. Some traces of girlhood stubbornly remained in that face, refusing to entirely leave her large, soft eyes, the petulant edges of her pouting mouth. That prim mouth and the upturned way of holding her chin gave her a defiant, haughty expression that always made her appear rather spoilt. Yet in unguarded moments, an indefinable blend of resolution and imaginative spirit still glimmered through the faultless demeanor of politeness and decorum that Aunt Millicent had so strongly imposed upon her.

"You look lovely," was all Mary Darling said.

Wendy knelt at her mother's bedside in a rustle of chiffon, white skirts settling around her like an unfolding lily. "I wish you would come."

"It's just a little cold," she said. "It will be gone soon enough. The doctor says just a couple more days in bed and I shall be much better. Now go and enjoy your night. All your father's friends will be there." A pause in which she idly traced her daughter's hair, smoothing back the soft curls. "That Charles Quiller-Couch is a nice boy. Your father says he has the best head for numbers he has ever seen."

"Yes," said Wendy stiffly, maintaining strict discipline over herself, refusing to betray any reaction. "He is perfectly nice." And handsome, in an easy, pleasant-faced way. And perhaps there _was_ something appealing about the way his chestnut curls fell over his brow. But she was unable to regard it in anything other than a detached, dispassionate manner, as one might admire a finely-done painting. All material and no matter.

Her mother looked at her carefully. Her voice was very gentle. "You could do worse, Wendy."

Wendy met her mother's searching gaze with an expression of supreme calmness. Mary Darling sighed."Sometimes I wonder what is going in that head of yours, child. Do you know why I fell in love with your father?"

Wendy shook her head. Her father was dear and awkward and foolish and affectionate; she adored him with all her heart. But he wasn't someone she could imagine a woman falling in love with. He wasn't green-eyed, laughing and daring and brave. He wasn't _(cold and cruel and ruthles_s_)_ –

Mary Darling's mocking mouth softened with reminiscence. "He had kind eyes."

Wendy said nothing. She too was haunted by eyes, eyes green as summer (_a piercing blue gaze that cut like ice in the darkest depths of her nightmares_) –

Mother's soft hand cupped her face, white fingers cool against her cheek, tilting her head upward. Wendy wondered how she could be so peaceful, so effortlessly content, and suddenly recalled some words spoken in a nursery long ago on a cold winter's night just like this one..._ A drawer of dreams, _she thought sadly.

"I think I have a drawer, too." The words left her before she was aware of it.

Mary Darling's soft, beautiful dark eyes were filled with loving warmth. "Never give up on dreams, Wendy."

* * *

She worried the pearls at her throat, dissatisfaction tugging at her prim mouth. The lace confines were constricting on her figure that was full and soft rather than slender. But she never would have revealed her discomfort, carrying herself with the stubborn feminine poise that social etiquette demanded. Her small white hands were folded neatly together. An outward image of perfection, a sensible young English lady engaging in the steady rise and fall of light conversation and delicate laughter, partaking in the champagne drunk from thin-stemmed glasses. All opportunities she could never have dreamed of before her father's promotion, opening doors for her that would make her the envy of any young girl, or so her aunt kept telling her. Effervescent, vacant pleasures so bent on maintaining stability, fearful of shattering that fragile façade of _reputation_. Smiles veiled by lace, emotions imprisoned in hollow-boned corsets. How light and empty it all was.

Excusing herself politely, Wendy detached herself from the group of people – wives and daughters of her father's associates whose names she kept confusing – and wandered around the drawing room in an attempt to appear occupied without having to engage in conversation. She was already feeling light-headed, whether from the champagne or the tight pressing of laces against the bones of her ribs that made every inhalation a challenge, it was impossible to tell. She was tired, and would much rather have sought out the library where she imagined curling up in a comfortable chair by a glowing fire, a book open in her lap, but this was a party and she was a guest, so she must smile with aching persistence and be polite to everyone.

John seemed to be having a better time than she was. "Of course," he was saying, "If one follows the Rousseauian school of thought, in which Man is an essentially benign creature, entirely opposed at a fundamental naturalistic level to witness the sufferings of others, and then applies those doctrines to -" Wendy smiled slightly and moved on.

Michael was busy regaling the latest exploit that had gotten him suspended again from Eton - something involving sneaking into the Drones club and stealing a policeman's helmet. The group of girls that surrounded him hung on every word, breathless. Wendy tossed her head with preening contempt, light-brown ringlets falling over her ears. Her pearl earrings swung with the movement.

"Wendy."

A barely discernible tremor shivered through the rigid line of her shoulders. She had been anticipating and dreading that voice all evening. Charles had been trying to get her alone as persistently as she had been trying to avoid him. But she knew the moment could not be put off any longer. She met his look with her characteristic gaze of straight, steady dignity that was too direct for politeness. The slightly pursed mouth and haughty curve of her chin only added to the impression of aloofness. But her expression softened at the evident nervousness in his eyes. He was awkward and sweet and earnest, and after all, Wendy thought, she could not cling to a childhood memory forever. Taking her softening as silent affirmation, Charles caught hold of her hand, his tense, eager grip tight on her delicate bones.

"I've been hoping for a chance to speak to you. After what happened last week, I thought you might be angry –"

Wendy felt a moment of shame. She was being perfectly horrid. Had it been her mother here, Mary Darling would have been courteous and gracious, her beauty and softness casting a gentle glow and light over the assembled company. And here she was, being ungrateful and disagreeable, and all because... because…

None of this was his fault. She could not bring herself to reproach him.

"No," she said, though still quietly and firmly trying to ease her hand from his grasp. "No, I am not angry."

"Because I wanted to apologize… it was frightfully bold of me. And I won't do it again – not unless you ask. It's only that… I do like you, Wendy. More than like you. As a matter of fact, I feel –"

Suddenly Wendy wished herself back home, wished herself a hundred miles away. A gathering, secret dread began tying knots inside her abdomen, though her smooth, guileless expression did not betray it for a moment. The breath rattled in her chest, unable to escape the tight pressings of her corset.

"Charles –" she managed at last. She could feel the pressure closing around her like a vice.

"Let me see you," he said quickly. "Tomorrow. I will call round in the evening, at eight."

At that moment, Wendy gave in. She felt the whole thing sliding hopelessly into inevitability; her mother and father's exchanged glances, Aunt Millicent's pointed remarks, Charles' entreating persistence. She saw the rest of her life stretching out interminably before her like a play long-rehearsed: all the dinners and dances, the polite chatter and tedious gossip, the settling into mundane routine. Day after day, year after year. All the while telling herself, _this is what I must do. This is what is expected._ She took a deep breath and allowed the jaws of society to swallow her whole.

"Tomorrow," she said dully.

_And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow_, she thought wearily. _All the tomorrows for the rest of my life._

But she merely allowed herself a gracious smile and allowed him to lead her to his father, Edward Quiller-Couch. After all, it was expected, and she never did anything to step outside the confines of what was right and proper.

* * *

The delicate, lacquered shoes were cutting into her feet with every step she took. Wendy removed them carefully, wincing slightly as her toes were freed from the constricting pressure, supporting herself on the beam of the door. The nursery had the sad, neglected air of long disuse. All remained as it had been, the beds aligned along the wall, the white curtains framing the unopened window, but all was too tidy, too ordered. Like her life. Always inside the lines, always conforming to the patterns and plans. So steady and self-conscious, it made her want to –

She started slightly as John appeared before her. It was strange now that both her brothers, at eighteen and fifteen respectively, towered over her. John's collar was loosened, his bow-tie askew. He crumpled her fingers within his own. "Night, Wendy."

She felt a sudden rush of wistful affection towards him. Of her two brothers, she had always been closest to John. And yet… he was so different now, so thoughtful and solemn. She loved the man, just as she had loved him as a boy, yet every time he returned from university he was more and more a stranger to her. And he had found something he loved, _made _something of his life, while she was bound to obligation and marriage. It was only strong pride that held her back from asking him, _Do you remember Neverland? Do you remember the adventures we had, when anything was possible?_

Leaps and spirals and flights of imagination. She had written so many stories, pages and pages filled with vivid and colourful characters experiencing wild and magnificent adventures. Heroes with John's intelligence and Michael's streak of rebellion. Heroines as beautiful as mother. Yet the villains had always eluded her. She could never bring them to life. They were always so trite, so lackluster. Merely tired caricatures that she could never seem to imbue with life. She made them coarse, inelegant, blustering _(never slender and refined and eloquent) – _

She caught sight of her face across the room in the nursery mirror, grave and serious and subdued. A face where mischief and laughter had long been absent. The force of it struck her now more painfully than ever. What was this strange nostalgia that had stolen over her on this winter night? Perhaps it was having them all back together under the same roof, reminding her vividly of the children they had once been. Before dutiful routine. Before polite society. Before marriage. The very word turned her cold inside. It had a terrifying finality to it. No escape. No way out. She had never loved, never _would _love since –

Her mouth tightened with quiet disdain at her own romanticism. But in spite of herself and the unyielding pragmatism she had grown into, she found herself in the nursery at the chest of drawers, falling to her knees in a billowing movement of white silk, scrabbling for the small key and forcing it into the rusted lock (like everything in here, so neglected, so disused). The drawer opened with surprising smoothness (as though it were meant). Wendy's fingers came across the acorn Peter had given her so long ago in the mistaken belief that it was a kiss. Sudden despair filled her. Despair at her life, at herself, at how easily she had abandoned everything that had once mattered to her and slid so smoothly into the dull role demanded of her. When had she woken up to see this girl in the mirror, so stiff and cold, when she had once been carefree and laughing and happy? _(so much like Peter)_ On a sudden, rebellious impulse, she tugged the string of pearls from her throat, flinging them from her with a contemptuous motion. She picked up the acorn and fastened it around her neck. In after years, she had fashioned it into a locket, a place to store secret memories and treasured dreams that were once so precious to her –

_Never give up on dreams, Wendy._

_I already have, _Wendy thought. _The moment I turned my back on Neverland, closed my heart and decided it was time to grow up –_

It had been her eighteenth birthday when she had finally closed the drawer for the last time, and turned the key in the lock for good. She had put her stories away, _along with other childish things. _They remained in the dark, gathering dust. The stories she had written with such meticulous care, lovingly recreating every cherished memory and setting them to words. Her own years were traced in those pages; the scrawled handwriting of her earlier years to the elegant, slanting hand learned with painstaking repetition. She ran a white hand over the papers, slim fingers tracing the scrawled titles with a tender reverence. _The Battle of Slightly Gulch, The Tale of the Poisonous Cake, Tinker Bell's Leaf, The Never Bird,_ _The Mermaid's Lagoon…_

She curled up in the armchair, the manuscripts scattered across her silken lap, eyes half-closed, lost in memories. Adventure, danger, excitement, fear, love… How bright, how _alive_ Neverland seemed in comparison to this surface existence she dully walked through. Sometimes it seemed this world was a dream and only Neverland was solid and real. She was adrift, afloat, unwilling to resign herself to this shallow, impersonal life with its swarms of cold, lonely people. Yet what other choice awaited her? She was too old to abandon sanity and principles now. _I waited too long, _she thought. The time for choosing Neverland had come and gone. She would be a stranger to Peter now, one of those dreaded adults that were so laughable to him, and so beyond his understanding. What was it that was lacking inside herself that made him abandon her and never return? Had she not been strong enough, not brave enough, not _good _enough?

_But I never forgot. _She was held in stasis, waiting, always waiting. The thought of leaving inhabited and civilized regions to face danger and adventure… But she had never gone back. It was lost to her forever.

What would she be had she stayed in Neverland? Sometimes she thought about that other Wendy, the Wendy that could have been forever young and free. Would she be more alive? Would she love? Would she hurt?

Everything certain blurred away into a mist of imagined longings. Past dreams pushed against her life in the waking world, struggling to be made manifest. Which was the reality? The nursery began to pale and recede. Water surging like billowing clouds in the depths of her mind, she found herself falling into a hazy state of half-consciousness. She shivered, haunted by a half-remembered dream. A nightmare of silver loveliness, of smiles.

The memory was like a hook catching on her skin. Lost in the heady scent of darkness, breathing in the enveloping completeness of it. A tall-masted ship emerging through the gloom. Foam crashing against its sides, an icy sea surging beneath the moon in a steady ebb and flow, salt spray misting the wooden decks and black sails fluttering in the cold wind. Fractured moonlight on the water. A dark presence that reached out and touched her with a pale hand half-covered by the edges of fine lace, and the gleam of metal, its piercing bite startling her into wakefulness –

Wendy's eyes opened.

A cold breeze swept through the nursery, stirring her hair about her shoulders. The papers were lifted from her lap, fluttering across the room and landing in scattered disorder across the floor. She moved across the room, a glimmer of a white dress. Walking through the pages that lay spread around her feet. Waking through her own past that swirled around her in bewildering confusion. A strange, elusive, dreamlike state had descended over her; she moved with the slow, liquid fluidity of a somnambulist. As one entranced, she approached the window. The window that had not been opened in seven years. Ice spiderwebbed across the surface in filigreed traces. The lights twinkled outside like distant stars.

Wendy looked out of the window, her eyes large and grave. A breath, a whisper curled around her shoulders. As though another presence were in the room, soft and deadly sweet. Impelling her to madness.

Slowly, hesitantly, she placed her hands on the frosted glass. The pane of ice burned her palms. Drops of snow pierced the darkness, glinting almost silver. Her eyes fell on the small metallic catch, rust creeping around its edges. Her outstretched fingers trembled.

The curtains caressed her legs in billowing white folds, with the insidious coolness of a lover's touch. An unsteady exhalation escaped her lips.

Here then was a crossroads. A window to her fate.

_Did she dare…?_

Something held its breath. Something dark and tense and waiting.

And Wendy Darling opened the window.

* * *

The air that hit her lungs on that first inhalation was sharp and clear, searing through her chest like a blade (she had been suffocating for so long). The snow on the balcony was crystalline and untouched, cracking slightly beneath her delicate slippers as she stepped outside. Her fingers curled around the ice-tipped railings, the bottom of her gown slithering wetly across the cold stone. Wendy stood under the cold chill of the moon, gazing out at the view that opened beneath her.

London sparkled, a flawed, incandescent diamond. She looked out over the glittering, frost-ridden night. In the far distance she could see the Thames that curled like a black ribbon, threading its way past the bright lights that illuminated the Houses of Parliament. Over the sound of the traffic clattering past in the street below, Big Ben tolled its sonorous announcement of the hour. Above, the clouds floated by, high and icily. The moon glimmered, fleeting and mirror-faint through the veils of mist. It was a night for flying, for dreams. Soaring, tumbling through the icy, star-strewn sky, Peter's hand warm in hers, his wild, joyous laughter ringing in her ears. Taking her back, back to Neverland.

_Neverland_. That word of mysticism and enchantment. Wendy closed her eyes, her heart aching with the wonder of it that was forever lost to her. If she could only turn back time, to the days when she had lived on dreams, when adventures had been reality…

_Where are you, Peter, _she wondered sadly.

The longing to see those dappled forest-green eyes was an almost physical ache inside her. His laugh that rang with captured happiness. How earnestly she had tried to recreate those memories in the pages of her beloved stories! Always telling herself, _I must remember these things. I must remember them to tell to my children, and my children's children…_

He was not perfect; she had known that even as an infatuated girl. He was wild and wayward, and callous with the unconscious narcissism of childhood. But he was also merry and brave and spirited, a bewitching aura of magic and adventure surrounded him. The most vivid, _alive _person she had ever known. In her dreams they flew over seas in a moment, the isle appearing lush and green in the midst of the dark, swiftly turning ocean. If she could think _one happy thought_ –

_I just want to fly, _she thought wistfully. _One more time -_

The white curtains stirred in the breeze. A shadow rippled darkly in those whispering folds, like an arm upraised, sharp and curving –

Wendy shivered. It was cold, much too cold. The clouds hung heavy with ice and snowflakes. Shrouding her in oblivion, all while Neverland receded further and further away with every second that passed, as she grew older with each moment that elapsed… until, perhaps, one day she would forget there ever _was _a Neverland, and would think of it only as some idle childhood fancy, a mere game… she shivered again… coldness… forgetfulness. _Could_ she ever forget? No, never!

"Never," she whispered aloud. The word was repeated back mockingly. _Never… never… never…_

_Wendy…_

Wendy looked up hopefully, but the sky remained vast and remained still, the soft breath of snow wrapping around her shoulders. Ahead in the distance she could see it, _Second star on the right and straight on till morning. _It glimmered, waiting. In sight, and so unreachable.

No fairy dust would carry her through the air. No Peter would hold her hand. She would not fly tonight. She would never fly again.

With a sigh, she turned back to the nursery.

There was a movement of black in the corner of her eye _(a shadow)_ Wendy turned –

And felt something cold and sharp and hard curve around her bared shoulder, twisting her body painfully. She spun fast, blinded by white and shock, the metal _(silver) _cutting into her skin. Her back hit the wall painfully and a cry escaped her. The world tilted nauseatingly, and she caught a blurred glimpse of the city opening beneath her feet, dizzyingly close yet terrifyingly distant. The shadow leaned over her, breathing in her ear. An icy hand pressing against the silk that covered her lower back. She wrenched her body, straining to get away from it, him –

"Do cease struggling, you tiresome girl." A light, cultured voice, edged with faint amusement.

A ghost stirred in Wendy's memory. There was something horribly familiar about that odd, almost _effeminate _grace, the deadly cold aura that chilled her heart, even the decadent scents of closely-pressed tobacco and wine, suffocatingly near. Moonlight glinted off polished buckled boots, high and supple… her eyes travelled upward… a long, tailored coat of claret brocade, the ruffled white shirt beneath… features shrouded by the wide brim of that crimson-plumed hat –

Her lips froze around his name. "Captain Hook."

* * *

His perfection was terrible. The sharp jaw, the elegant nose and finely-turned mouth, all devastatingly familiar, all just as she remembered (remembered oh-too-well). Elaborate coils of black hair framing a pale, lean face. But it was the forget-me-not eyes that caught her and held her paralyzed. The bluest eyes she had ever seen. She could never have forgotten those eyes.

Breathless stasis. Both remained still, trapped in frozen solitude. The world receded and there was only him and him alone. White silence.

"Wendy… _Darling_," he breathed, emphasizing her surname in a way she was not sure she liked.

Wendy tried to speak. Her voice was frozen in her throat. Her mind caught in a blizzard. _No… not you not you not you…_

She recalled with startling clarity that first sight of him seven years ago at the Black Castle, his face so ruthless, so derangingly handsome. She had been little more than a child then, yet the image was burned indelibly into her memory. A lingering presence, there in the back of her mind, always. A cold, unbreakable cord, he had wrapped himself around her thoughts, calling to her with the drawling command that had almost ensnared her even as a girl…

Dark-gold lashes swept down, brushing her ice-kissed cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, Hook was still there. Frozen in time; he hadn't aged a day. Still so unchanged, even down to the flash of gold in his ear, a rakish touch that belied his affectations of aristocracy. His entire appearance a marvelous deception.

"You – you _cannot _be here. This is a dream." _This is a nightmare. _A shadow. A torment of the imagination.

A light, melodious laugh. It sent shivers down her spine. Her heart shuddered in a way it had not done seven years ago. "All evidence to the contrary, my dear girl."

"No," she said, "I watched you die -"

"I haven't forgotten," he retorted coldly, biting out each word. The hook curved into her skin. Her breath came short, teeth gritted against the searing pain of his hold. Sharpness rippling through her. That edge tracing her skin like the thinnest of knives. A silver leash. Wendy inhaled in fright.

"So you have come for revenge."

Those blue eyes, so light and languid, now burned like ice. "Aye, seven years I have waited -"

The wall was hard at her back and shoulders, the frost melting against her flesh, running in icy rivulets down her back, soaking through the satin. She heard its hiss. So cold… A panting breath, the warm mist fogging the window. Dimly through the blurred glass, she could see into the nursery, down along the hall where John and Michael would be sleeping –

_Oh God!_

John - Michael - she _had _to warn them –

They had to run. _Now _–

Wendy tried to tear herself away, but her struggles seemed only to amuse the captain as his grip tightened. Possessing. Her shoulders wrenched. Metal on bone. Once, she might have begged him to release her, but she had changed in the intervening years, become stiffer, haughty, scornful.

"Let go!" she ordered imperiously. Her voice rang out, clear and sharp in the frosty night. The words hung in the air as Hook's expression turned suddenly menacing. An amused, dangerous, predatory look as he regarded her lazily.

"Oh no, my beauty. I think not. Not now that I have you again."

She twisted against him, realizing how hopelessly she was trapped. Her waist a frozen hourglass bound in whale-bone confines and the intricate crossings of lace, the stays of society that had no place in a world of imagination and adventure and terrible, terrible danger –

"I once thought you had a sense of honour –"

"You wish me to be… magnanimous?" His smooth voice was like ice melting down her neck.

"I wish you to be a gentleman. A gentleman would unhand me at once."

"Dear girl, I am no gentleman. I am a pirate."

Wendy swallowed hard, fear sealing her throat. Appealing to any sense of decency he might possess was futile. His heart was cold as ice. He was utterly without pity, utterly without mercy. She had learned that lesson long ago. Never again would she be drawn in by the deceptively polite exterior. Hook was the villain of the story. She had been dazzled by him for a moment perhaps, but it had been Peter. Always Peter.

"I'll scream," she said. "I'll call for help. They'll come running."

His elegant brows arched upward. Ice-blue eyes held her frozen against the wall. "No," he said finally. "No, I think you are above the tedious vulgarity of screams."

"You're right," she replied with more conviction than she felt. "I'm no coward."

Long, elegant fingers gripped her chin in a brutal hold. There was something horrible in the sight of those fingers, so startlingly pale, so slender and refined; the thought that the hand of one who paraded himself as a cavalier could be capable of such villainous horrors. The heavy silver ring on his middle finger was cutting into her skin. Tears stung her vision.

"Let me look at you." The cool sound of his voice, so caressingly familiar with its slight edge of cruelty.

The silver hook curved around her jaw. Her head was forced to one side, breath fogging the space between them. She shuddered in that tight, hurting hold. The blood beating hard in her throat. A hand tangled in her loosened hair, twisting it above her neck. Her world narrowed to the poison-blue of those narrowed eyes. A lowered, scrutinizing gaze stripping away her flesh, the damp silks that clung to her skin. Slowly, his mouth curved beneath the drooping black mustache.

"Such a little doll you've grown up to be. And I thought you were so violently _opposed_ to growing up." He sneered, cutting, treating her like a fool. That and his mocking words stung her strong sense of pride. The first icy intensity of shock over, Wendy met his gaze steadily, determined not to show how afraid she was.

"I _had _to grow up," she retorted in a clear, cold voice. "Not everyone can keep playing childish games_ -_"

His irises blazed. She sizzled under those blue crescents. She wondered how Peter had ever dared provoke him. No game, this. It had been once. But _now_ –

He pinned her arm behind her back, twisting it cruelly. Dragging her to him like the pull of a drowning current. His closeness was dizzying, cool darkness gathering at the corners of her eyes. His cold breath against her ear.

"Tell me… _Wendy_. Do you still like stories?"

When she saw the amused, quiet contempt on his face, her hatred overpowered her fear. "Yes," she said shakily. "There is one I distinctly recall… of a pirate who was defeated by Peter Pan… perhaps you've heard of it?"

Hook's anger flashed, steel-bright. But he mastered himself with an effort, his marble face unmoving. "I think you were less tiresome as a child."

"I think you were more frightening when I was a child." It was a lie, but one almost worth telling for the glimpse of raw fury that flashed across his features. She gasped a breath and the silver bit in sharp. Hot blood, cold night air. She winced at the pain and a look of brief satisfaction flared in his agate eyes. Steaming and breathing – piercing cold –

With a burst of savage energy she had not realized she possessed, Wendy tore herself from his grasp and staggered backwards, veering dangerously close to the balcony's edge _(a Wendy bird –)_ Lily-hued silk tangled around her legs. Beneath the hollow-boned constraints of her tight corset, she could not breathe –

She glanced down. The world slanted to one side. Black sky and bright lights. The snow-slicked streets below. A roar of traffic at her feet, churning the dirt-blackened ice. It was a dizzying fall. She could imagine how it would feel; the rush of air, like falling through endless diamonds, the cool blue of his eyes emblazoned across her lids before the sharp pain of darkness swallowed her whole…

The frost stung like needles on her exposed shoulders. Already Hook was coming towards her, approaching with light grace, as though every movement had been meticulously calculated. He moved with the effortless ease of a born gentleman, a hard smile playing around his lips.

The ice cracked beneath her slippers. Wendy inched back another step. Her silk gown whispered in the icy breeze. Her fingers curled around the cold railings behind her.

"Stay back."

He laughed; a deep, throaty sound. His eyes gleamed beneath the hooded lids. Carefully lazy, softly alert. Waiting to see what she would do next.

Her hands braced on the metal. Slid sideways until she felt the frosted urn behind her. A hideous ornament of Aunt Millicent's, but never had she been more grateful for its presence than now. Numbed fingers traced the rounded dome until she had it in a firm grip. Without hesitation, she hurled it across the balcony.

The ceramic splintered into a hundred pieces, the shards quivering across the ground with ringing reverberations that shivered to a halt at the captain's booted feet.

Hook started to laugh, his shoulders shaking beneath the metal-threaded brocade. "Do you really think you can hurt me?" That old, drawling arrogance, familiar as the ache of an old wound.

"No," Wendy said, and waited.

There. Running footsteps. Halting outside the nursery door.

"What now, Captain?" she asked. "Will you fight your way through an entire household?" Her glance went to the edge of the balcony. "Or you can leave that way."

"Wendy?"

That voice, overbearing and querulous, but now achingly welcome. A lifeline. Wendy's heart strained beneath the lace confines. Through the door of the nursery was warmth and safety, the world of tedious prudery and reason that could yet save her from this – _him –_

So close, reachable… she need only call out a desperate appeal, and Hook would be gone forever –

So why did she hesitate –?

Her lips parted –

The piercing bite of metal at her back, between her shoulder blades stilled her. Deadly cold lancing through her skin. A coil of black hair slid across her cheek. She jumped and felt a soft laugh reverberate through his chest.

"Get rid of her," Hook breathed in her ear. Merciless fingers hooked around her hip, dragging her in deeper. Locked hopelessly against him. "Or I will."

"Wendy, what on earth are you doing in there?"

From outside, Aunt Millicent was rattling the door. The door Wendy had not locked. Breath escaped her cold-stiffened lips in a hiss. Her lungs burned and the silver hurt. She could feel him behind her, pressed close. A magnetic field, a cage around her body.

"I'm fine," her voice trembled. "I just dropped something." The captain crooned a murmur of approval in her ear. It froze her blood.

She heard her aunt's sigh of irritation. "Do be more careful." Then the sound of retreating footsteps. Chill silence descended. Her chest was stinging with the cold sharpness of the night air. She was alone. Alone, with –

Hook. Her villain of ice and iron and dark imagination. A living, breathing contradiction of aristocratic courtesy and murderous intent. She had forced him down into the murky depths of nightmare for so long now, something forbidden and deadly to be forgotten in the glaring light of day. Never to be feared again. She had thought him dead. What kind of watery grave had he crawled up from to return to haunt her now? What kind of being was it that even death had could not hold down?

_Do you really think you can hurt me?_

She twisted to face him, pressed against his chest, against the heart that would never beat. His ice consumed her very soul. She looked up at him fearfully, all pretense of bravado gone. "What do you want from me?" she whispered at last.

His lips were soft against her ear. A cold thrill passed across her skin. His vice-like hold a piercing blade of silver sliding into her heart. "I told you once. _You _are my obsession."

"You're lying." She could hear the breath in her ears, thick and heavy. "You would only use me to get to Peter –"

Hook's dark brows lifted in a terrible parody of offence. He pressed a hand to his scarlet breast with an elaborate flourish. "My dear girl. I am a man of _feeling_."

The cruel mockery of hearing her own words was too much to bear. "I know what you are," she cried, shaking; "You're a liar and a murderer and a villain, and all of Neverland knows it. And if you try to take me, all of London will know it too – my brothers will spread the truth far and wide, and then they will come and rescue me; them, and Peter. Peter will defeat you again, and I'll laugh when he does -"

His blue eyes flared, blood-hot, at the mention of Peter. "I know Pan. He is far crueller than I could ever be."

"_He _never tried to kill me."

"He never tried to remember you either, did he?" She winced. His voice turned low and callous, the words like jagged edges of ice being dragged over her skin. "Pan no longer cares about you. Did you think you would be any different to those that came before? Oh, yes. There have been others. And more will follow."

"But I -"

"You _grew up, _my darling girl. You couldn't _possibly _interest him now. I, on the other hand…" Icy fingers traced her cheek, slow, silken. She tensed all over. Blood pounded under her skin. "He has forgotten you, my beauty. But you have not forgotten him, I think. Which means you should be _most_ useful. And the thought of using Peter's _darling _Wendy as a means to bring him down is rather fitting… is it not?" He allowed himself a laugh at his own dark humour.

"You've forgotten one thing, haven't you?" said Wendy.

"Which is…?"

She forced her voice to remain calm, swallowing down her hatred and fear. "It's been years since I even set foot in Neverland. What makes you think –"

"I'm aware of that," he hissed. "But the last thing I recall, dear girl, is _you. _Pan had a Wendy, and he defeated me. It was the one thought I clung to in the depths of that –" he broke off, and an expression crossed his face that frightened her more than anything else she had seen from him that night – "I began to think you would never open the window."

Wendy felt sick with horror. How long had he been planning this? How long had he watched her, in secret, awaiting his chance? Her body sank helplessly into that arctic hold. Black lace on white skin. Touching and melting. His eyes like diamonds. So hard and cold.

"You know his hiding places –"

"No-"

"You know his secrets –"

"No-"

"You will make things a lot easier by being cooperative."

She summoned one last effort. "Kill me now then, because you'll get no secrets from me."

Wendy closed her eyes, dreading what he would do next. His breath was cool against her closed eyelids. She flinched when the hook was raised, but when it touched her skin, the sensation was startling, like a fallen snowflake landing on her upturned face. "Of course…" Hook murmured, his cruel touch turning suddenly languorous. "We need not be enemies in this." His fingers were ice cold. Burning. A chill as severe as the touch of that sharp, silver hook. Wendy stared at him and said nothing. "Pan has abandoned you, my beauty. He has humiliated me, wounded me, killed me… _he _is the true villain of this story. We should not have to suffer from his cruelty."

The curving hook ran an icy caress down her neck. Sliding along the cool dip of skin offered by her light gown. Wendy drew a quickened breath. There was a strange, sharp, torturing satisfaction in the touch. Curling black hair, damp with sleet, fell down the hollow of her throat as he leaned over her, unbearably close.

"I offer you the chance to join me willingly," the captain breathed in silken tones. "Would you not like to pay him back? Come with me… _Wendy_."

"Do you mean…" her voice faltered – "becoming a pirate?"

Thin lips twisted in a grin. "Precisely."

Wendy stared at him; at the noble, aquiline features, the mass of dense, dark curls tumbling over his shoulders. Forget-me-not eyes regarding her, desultory and amused. The lazy, long-limbed arrogance as he lounged indolently, gleaming with immaculate cruelty.

"Captain," she said, "You are a fool."

Hook's handsome, effeminate face turned ferocious. Blue eyes flashed like lightning. His hand curled around her bared shoulder, fingers biting into her skin. Pins and needles darted through her veins. That touch drained and burned her. A ruthless smile rose to his lips. "So it's to be the hard way, is it?"

"You cannot take me. You cannot _fly. _You _have _no happy thoughts –"

His cadaverous face grew livid with a terrible, pale wrath. "I don't need happiness, girl," he growled. "I need retribution."

Wendy thought quickly, weighing up her chances. She knew that Hook would take her – he had set his mind on her and she did not have the strength to fight him. And better it be her than John or Michael. But she _would not _betray Peter. John and Michael would discover her absence. And in Neverland, Peter would rescue her as soon as he learnt of her imprisonment; she just needed more _time – _

"Peter _will _find me," she said. "And he will kill you. Again."

"Your naivety is charming."

"Do you really think you can do anything in Neverland that he isn't aware of?" She drew herself up. "Especially taking _me?_"

The press of those fingers, so cold. Her flesh tingled. "You seem very certain, my pretty, spoilt darling."

"I am certain. In fact… if he does not come… I will tell you everything you want to know. Willingly."

"And if he does?"

"You let me go. Unharmed." _Untouched._

"A _wager?_" A light flared in his narrow eyes that fixed on her with a mingled expression of curiosity and greed. "An intriguing proposition, my dear girl. But why should I not just torture the information from you? The end result will be the same."

"You could," Wendy agreed. "And you know I will resist. For as long as it takes. Long enough to make you appear a fool in front of your men. With their mockery and Peter's wrath facing you…" She trailed off, seeing she had his avid attention. "But if Peter does not come to save me, if he abandons me, then I am bound by no loyalty to him." She met his icy gaze. "I will be yours to command."

Delight played across his features. "All right, my beauty. We shall see who has the right of it in the end. If Pan does not come for you in one day –"

"Three days," she said suddenly.

He paused, considering her. "Three days…" he said slowly. "Very well. In that time, I will do nothing to you. I give you my word. But after that…" His smile caught the light, like the glint off the surface of a knife. A chill ran through her veins as she saw how he was relishing this. The chance to shatter her of her last, final illusions. A vindictive game, an old obsession. She braced herself in dreaded anticipation, waiting for the next move.

The captain drew a skull-corked vial from the folds of his claret coat, a viscous liquid swirling inside. The colour of spilled wine. Spilled blood. And Wendy realized what he was about to do a moment before he did it. Too late, she pushed against him. Metallic gold-threaded brocade met her hands. His grip on her steel-tight and unrelenting –

Her head forced back –

Memory flashed through her - _take your medicine -_

The last thing Wendy remembered was the touch of sweet poison on her lips. As the slow, drugging darkness rolled over her, she reflected dimly that it tasted of vengeance.


	2. Day 1: Part 1

**FORGET-ME-NOT**

_Long lost words whisper slowly to me  
Still can't find what keeps me here  
When all this time I've been so hollow inside  
I know you're still there_

_Watching me, wanting me_  
_I can feel you pull me down_  
_Fearing you, loving you_  
_I won't let you pull me down_

('Haunted', Evanescence)

* * *

**- Day 1 –**

**Part I**

_On the other side of the darkness was water. She swam blindly, soundless and sightless in a sea of somnolence where there was no time or memory, only dreams. _

_Wendy's eyes opened and liquid light spilled through her vision. She was in the Mermaid's lagoon, a nebulous green glow illuminating the damp stone walls of the cavern. They yawned around her like the jaws of a primordial sea creature. Devouring. She remained still, her eyes slowly becoming accustomed to the strange phosphorescence, shivering in the thin white silks clinging to her body that was as cold as a drowned corpse._

Am I dead, _she wondered dimly. But a strange kind of afterlife, where she could see and breathe and feel _(and fear…)

_A voice echoed in the hollow depths. Deep in sonorous liquid, a slick caress against her pallid skin. Wendy tensed._

Did'st thou ever think you would be free of me, child?

_Spectral light rippled on the walls. Slick jet and glittering malachite. Her eyes strained in the dancing gloom, trying to find the source of those soft, damning tones._ _A rippling blur, a wavering reflection. Skin white and luminescent. A courtly silhouette in elegant profile, the impression of spectral, terrible beauty imprisoned on her eyelids. The chill breath caressed her skin like a thousand knives. Her throat was too tight to scream. _

_The words left her, hoarse and strangled. _Impossible. _Impossible._ You're dead –

_A cadaverous smile, __the red cut of his mouth sensual and depraved._ Gone, but not forgotten, dear girl.

_Closer he came, emerging through the dense, impenetrable shadows. Aquamarine light hovered around his dark shape like a subaqueous halo, the cool glow teasing his features into focus amid the rippling shadows. The angular white face framed by a mass of curling black hair, luminous. The narrow mouth. Dark blue eyes lambent in the tourmaline glow. __Before her numbed feet could move, he had pulled her to him in the macabre parody of a waltz; she was pressed against the ragged edges of his torn jacket, the once rich material sodden and waterlogged. _Wet, _she thought, with a shudder. _But why?

_Wine-red (blood-red) lips curved in cruel satisfaction. _Have you not missed me? Most inconsiderate of you, my Darling girl, when _you _are all I've thought about in this cursed place. I am so grateful you've _deigned_ to visit me in my subterranean hell.

_Hook breathed against her neck, damp and cloying. Tainted with bitter _(sweet) _poison. Swallowing down her fear and revulsion (the shudder of sensation, a thrill strange and evocative), she found her voice. Her tone would have been petulant, had it not faltered._

If you are in hell, it is of your own making. You brought yourself here, captain.

No, _he hissed. _You did. You and that wretched boy.

_He darted out a hand that curled around the back of her neck, and – Wendy bit down on her lip and tasted blood – the touch seared through her skin and turned her heart to ice. His cool, slender fingers ghosted down the contour of her back that arched shiveringly beneath that spectral touch. Silver trails of water trickling like ice down the curving slope of flesh _(drowning…)

_Tangled black hair hung wetly over his shoulders. Wendy tried to speak, but her voice caught in her throat as he gently brushed a kiss over her cheek. She turned her face away in loathing; feeling her body tense, tighten – _

_His lips traced the tense line of her jaw. A smile lit his forget-me-not eyes, but the gleaming light within was hollow and cold. _You condemned me to this place. And _you, _dear girl, will share it with me.

_Wendy choked as his breath, cold as metal (warm as wine), slid over her lips. She felt sick and faint, as though chains were weighting down her limbs, dragging her down into the slick, swirling depths of abyssal blue._ You'll be just as dead, _she managed to rasp weakly._

Indeed, _he murmured._

_She clenched her cold hands into fists. His whisper, cloying, melodious, insinuated into her mind. _Still a beauty, Wendy… Darling…

_She held herself rigid as his hand glided along her waist. The glint of his teeth sharp and predatory against the vivid red of his parted lips. Fingers skating along her hips, searing through the damp silks. She closed her eyes against the strange flash of uncertain longing, aware of a cold anger rising within her – _

Stop, _she said through clenched teeth._

_Hook tore his hand from the imprisoning grasp on her waist, winding his fingers sharply through her hair, tugging her close enough to feel the silver point of metal pressing on her breast. Hard and cold against the voluptuous warmth of his body, ruffled lace and sumptuous brocade, sensual and decadent and dangerous and _maddening –

Stubborn? _His grip turned iron, his sensuous face twisting into a grimace of cruelty. _You have a predilection for being difficult, my beauty. As you will. There are many ways you can die down here. The sharp edge of silver shall kiss you goodnight…

_Metal flashed. Her eyelids flickered and she saw – _bone –

_Wendy looked at him, really looked. His jaw, his throat, his hand – all gilded by the pale light. His eyes a shade darker than the midnight blue of his coat embroidered with silver. Elegant and mocking and debonair as he had ever been._ _The aristocratic gentleman, the degenerate rake._ _Yet behind that, she caught a sudden, fleeting afterimage, of white bones and hollowed eyes and decaying flesh, long strands of ebony hair still clinging to the visible skull, heightening the gruesome contrast. Oily green bubbles formed at the corner of those lips that stretched back over grinning teeth. A skeletal hand outstretched to embrace her while on the other, the silver hook glimmered dully beneath the tarnished surface…_

_Wendy choked with horror and stumbled back. The mirror-light oozed down the walls. The decaying jaw tightened._

So, this form is less pleasing to you, is it?

_Blind fear swallowed her. Her feet slipped on the slick rock. It was dark again and she was falling…the cavern whirling around her…_

_The water, oh, the water was cold as death, like ice against her skin… her hair floating about her, like a mermaid… black sails waving above her, high enough to block out the moon…_

_Hook's laughter was around her, fractured into a thousand echoes. _Do you think you can escape me, my beauty? You can _never _escape me. I will _haunt _you –"

_Tinkling laughter, a preternatural lure. Wendy blinked the water from her eyes. Something approached her, disturbing the still, black surface. An arm pale as alabaster and shimmering fish-tail scales. _Mermaids. _Ethereal eyes staring into her soul. And from behind, clammy hands pulled at her clothing, dragging her into the treacherous depths –_

_Floundering – _

_The water closed over her head, the green pool swallowing her whole. Her eyes opened to the lunar glow of gossamer shapes. She could feel the living things that moved, pressing against her. A pale hand entwined in her streaming skirts, sliding along her thigh. Horror rose up in her throat. Hook smiled at her with fiendish delight, liquid black hair streaming around his face like spilled ink. His laughter bubbled against her lips._

Stay with me, beloved, down here… such stories they would tell of us…

_She was sinking into him, now straining away, now falling against the hard line of his body…hitting him with a muffled thud as she tore herself from the enveloping folds of his moldering jacket, only to be pulled back by some irresistible tide…_

_She flayed wildly, beating against him –_

_Thump… thump… thump…_

No – no! _she silently screamed and_

the bright gold line of daylight fell slanting across her eyelids. There was material, rough and woolen, beneath her prone form. Dry… and warm…

Gradually, she rose from the fogged depths of unconsciousness, slowly gaining awareness of her surroundings. She was lying on a hammock and the dull thudding noise she heard had been the muffled sound of it swaying against the wall with a regular, rocking motion. Wendy sat up at once, swinging her legs onto the wooden floor. Immediately awake and alert in every nerve, she cautiously surveyed her surroundings.

She was in a cabin, small and sparsely furnished. Smooth wood floors and walls, polished with wear. A dresser sat across from her, a heavy oaken piece of furniture, and above it was a tarnished mirror, its dulled surface cracked, the rust casting a bronze sheen across the glass. Lamps hung along an oiled rope, swinging to and fro from the low ceiling with that steady, rhythmic movement. A circle of pale aquamarine caught her gaze; the only source of light in the room. Through the small porthole window, the sea glittered, foaming at the distant shoreline, turquoise slivers of light shivering beneath the surface. She could see the dusky pink coral reefs, the splash of green where the jungle breathed, palpable and mysterious, and could almost imagine she heard the cry of exotic birds, the sonorous drip of malachite stained water in the dark cave that housed the Mermaid's lagoon.

So she was aboard the _Jolly Roger _and the captain held her captive. She was strangely calm, as though it had been inevitable she would come here, that somewhere in the back of her mind, she had known this was always going to happen. This was the situation and she must face it with as much courage and resolve as she was able, no matter how dire the circumstances appeared. Peter would rescue her, and if he did not – well, she had three days to find a means of escape. The crew could not watch her all the time, and if they drew near enough to the shore, she could always chance a break for freedom and cast herself upon the mercy of the Indians who had long been allies of Peter's. No, she was not beaten yet. She could outwit a group of uneducated pirates, of that she was certain.

It was only when she thought of the captain that Wendy's resolution faltered and her heart sank within her. The memory of that cruel hook curving into her skin and the flash of those ice-blue eyes chilled her to the core, a lingering poison that flared and burned. She feared him because she did not understand him, and was unable to reconcile the charming, debonair gentleman with the vicious and heartless villain she knew he was. Handsome yet dissolute, soft yet treacherous, courteous yet cruel.

Why had he come for her? What did he want?

_Pan had a Wendy, and he defeated me._

She was too young, she realized hopelessly, too sheltered and civilized to understand the thoughts that fermented like dark poison in the mind of this man who would stop at nothing to fulfill his dreams of vengeance. Her own experiences were smooth, straight and neat, formed in a rigid pattern of Edwardian refinement. To defeat him, she must first understand him; allow her mind to descend into dangerous and uneasy territory, to places such as she had dreamed about.

Even before she had ever set eyes on him, he had become a part of her, breathed to life through her stories, his voice a silken whisper in the depths of her mind, and always, haunting eyes of the deepest blue. His dark visage emerging through her nightmares that even now lingered ghostlike on the edges of her consciousness. And now, here, his presence pervaded the very walls. Corrupting her dreams like ink bleeding through water. She was trapped in a silver snare and she could feel it slowly tightening. He could never be cut free of her. But she would not stay here and wait for the worst.

Wendy stood up, smoothing down the gossamer-fine creases in her slim, high-waisted gown. The wooden floor dipped and surged beneath her feet, the low rhythm of the sea moving in her ears, a faint, distant roaring like the sound of a conch shell when held against an auricle. Fear was receding and curiosity was taking its place. And, beneath that, a low sense of excitement humming through her veins. She was back – back in Neverland for the first time in years, something she would never have dreamed possible. How different would it be viewed through the cynical gaze of adulthood? Would it be clearer and brighter or more elusive and dreamlike? Or would it be darker and more deadly?

It was this curiosity that prompted her to cross the room and reach for the brass-handled door. To her surprise it opened easily and she stepped into the dimly-lit passage with caution. No one hindered her. She moved warily, half-expecting to see Hook's grinning face leaning over her. Yet in spite of her unease, she felt a sense of humiliation at how she had behaved last night, as though she had somehow shown herself up, been less than what she was. She had probably shivered and swooned just as he had expected. The thought of the captain's quiet contempt made her face burn, made her feel uncommonly clumsy, awkward, childlike. She had not been herself – the true Wendy that peered through her reflections beneath the soft white powder and silk drapings of refined womanhood – the Wendy that had been suppressed since Neverland. The Wendy she must somehow find again if she was to have any chance of surviving.

* * *

The sun was shining as she stepped outside, the light falling in a dancing haze of mirrored gold on the surface of the water. The last time she had been outside, it had been a frosty night in midwinter, the stars glittering coldly overhead and snow splintering like diamonds beneath her feet, but here the freshness of spring was in the air, bright and brisk and cloudless. Wendy remained still for some moments, merely savoring the sensation of the warmth beating on the pale skin of her bared arms. It was as though she hadn't felt the sun in years, confined to formal parlors, always so mindful of maintaining the porcelain whiteness of her skin that fashion and class consciousness demanded. Even when the girls at school had been permitted an excursion to Torquay, they had been armed with parasols and respectable bathing suits that concealed far more than they revealed.

She could hear the sails creaking above her. The wind had whipped the waves into turbulent green crests, white foam flying onto the deck, stinging her face and blowing her hair about her shoulders. It brought colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her eyes, and she clung to the side of the deck, inhaling deeply. The strong smell of sea air, the tang of salt and rum and oiled leather was sharp and invigorating; it filled Wendy with the heady sense of adventure, called her to answer the challenge set by the sharp and bracing winds. Her heart was beating with a strange excitement. Last night, she had been resigned to the chill domesticity of a dutiful engagement, and now she was a captive held on a ship by an enemy that had haunted her since childhood; there was danger, and there was adventure, there was a wild unpredictability that had been missing from her life for longer than she cared to remember.

Feeling refreshed and emboldened, she set to exploring her surroundings with a new sense of eagerness and resolve. So accustomed to furnished rooms and fine draperies and expensive carpets, her outdoor rambles had been primarily limited to London's enclosed horticultural and botanical parks or the regimented naturalism of Kensington Gardens. Always so perfectly cultivated, never allowed to become wild or untamed or _free – _

Far away, London was awakening in the chill grey of dawn, her father setting off to work, collars swathed highly around his throat, his top hat pulled low. Mother would be seeing John off at Victoria Station, and Michael… goodness knows what mischief Michael would already have gotten himself into. The thought of John's absence struck a painful chord in her heart and yet it already seemed a part of someone else's life, like looking at the photographs of an old acquaintance. _My world was in a dream last night, _she thought. _And now it has woken up._

It was with some force of will that Wendy reminded herself she was a prisoner and this ship was her cage. She was trapped aboard her very own Flying Dutchman, haunted by a ghost who could not die. For all the deceptive calm, this was a place of evil and cruelty, ruled over by a tyrannical captain who delighted in murder and pillaging and possibly viler crimes she was as yet unaware of. She was alone and friendless, prey to the mercurial whim of a man who possessed no honour to bind him to the promise he had so carelessly made last night.

However, the change of scenery and her own adventurous spirit wakened out of its long torpor made self-pity impossible. In the light of day and under the warmth of the bright sun, the horrors of last night were chased away; even the lingering vestiges of the nightmare that had awoken her was receding to nothing more than a dim, unpleasant memory. Everything seemed fresh and bright and new; and her situation did not seem nearly so daunting as it had only a few hours ago.

It did not take long for her to become accustomed to the motion of the ship on the water. It was a strange feeling, to once again be walking the swaying, salt-drenched boards that had haunted her imagination for so long. Canvas sails billowed wildly overhead in the fresh, sharp, choppy winds. Her skirts of stiff, raw silk rapidly became saturated, dragging heavily with each movement. It would have been far easier to cast them off…

A floorboard creaked behind her. Wendy stilled, hardly breathing. Anticipation tugged at the cords of her beating heart. Dreading _(hoping) – _

"Come out," she said, determined not to tremble. It took all her strength to resist turning around.

There was a cough and the sound of a low, shuffling gait that made the boards groan. The agonizing tension left her shoulders. Appearing before her was a face semi-hidden beneath a tangled white beard, pale blue eyes creased with friendly welcome through a pair of precariously balanced spectacles.

"Miss Wendy, is it?" he asked, the faintest hint of an Irish brogue discernible in his salt-roughened tones.

She greeted him formally. "Mr Smee."

"How d'ye do, Miss?"

Wendy looked him up and down warily. She could not forget that this man had played a part in deceiving her (oh, what fool she had been back then!) leading her blindly into the captain's insidious trap and standing by while she had been forced to walk the plank. He may not have directly harmed her, but Wendy had a suspicion that there was a shrewd, cunning mind beneath the simple, well-meaning exterior. The past few years had taught her deceptiveness could live within the most guileless faces. She had learned to be cautious of kindness.

"He sent you to watch me," she said. "Didn't he?"

"The Cap'n is busy, that is t'say…"

"And what is the captain doing?"

"Can't really tell ye, Miss."

Wendy examined a dainty white hand, the skin unblemished by any marks of wear or labour. Barely fit for holding a heavy parasol, let alone a pistol or cutlass. She looked at him imperiously, a faintly bitter smile on her pursed lips. "Do you think I _need _watching, Mr Smee? You cannot tell me that you look at me and consider me a threat?"

The small man twisted his hands in his apron. "It's not my place t'say."

"No," said Wendy. "I don't suppose it is." Adding rather cruelly, "Your place is merely to follow orders."

Smee's face flushed beneath the weathered tan and he made a lot of noise clearing his throat.

"I'm sorry," she said, more gently. _I never used to be unkind. _"You should learn not to pay too much attention to what I say."

If anything, this seemed to embarrass him even more. He affected not to hear her, instead saying, "Why don't I get ye something to eat, Miss?"

His words made Wendy realize that the exploration had awakened her appetite, so she obediently followed him down into the small, square kitchen, where a great tureen hung suspended over a lowly smoldering fire, the ashes of which blackened the surface of the narrow table and benches aligning the wall. Smoke clouded the porthole windows, turning them grey with years of grime. The floor was filthy with cabbage peelings, scraps of potato and overturned bottles that she stepped over with barely-concealed repugnance. The state of the kitchen appalled her natural instincts for cleanliness, but she said nothing, primly taking a seat and crossing her hands over her lap.

Smee laid a full flagon before her. Wendy stared at him. "That's rum," she said.

"Aye, the finest."

"Haven't you any tea?"

Frightened by the look of icy contempt in her eyes, he hurried to oblige.

Curling her hands around the cup, she took a sip of scalding hot tea that went some way to abating the chill in the brisk air. Wendy could not remember the last time she had tasted tea that wasn't Earl Grey or did not come in little white bone-china cups, but there was a smoky and slightly bitter tang that satisfied her body far more than anything she ever remembered having at home. She felt stronger, strong enough to start asking questions and learn more about her situation (_the one who had brought her here_).

"It is a strange captain," she mused aloud, "Who does not come out aboard his own ship, but remains shut in his cabin all day."

"He's a strange man, Miss," Smee replied over his shoulder, still clattering over the stove. The faint smell of burning lingered in the smoky air that hung around her in swathes like grey sea mist.

"Yes. Strange enough to fall to his death yet emerge completely unscathed. How does that happen?"

"That's a simple enough story. No crocodile could complete with the likes of James Hook when his blood's up – oh no! He sliced it clean open and climbed right out. He's got the head displayed on his wall."

Wendy stared, for once surprise startling her from her formal restraint. "Do you mean to tell me that he cut his way out of a_ crocodile?"_

"Oh yes," he said lightly, as though such an occurrence were commonplace.

"And that masterful feat took him seven years to accomplish?"

The bo'sun did not reply, but placed a dish before her. A bowl of oatmeal and a thick-cut loaf of bread generously spread with butter. There was no sense in starving, so she quietly thanked him and fell on the meal hungrily. It was plain, but wholesome with that same earthy, vital quality she had tasted in the tea. But still she was curious, _insatiable, _the captain looming at the back of her memory, piercing deep through her consciousness_. _She _felt _him, as though he was there with her, silent and smiling and so very dangerous. His essence clear in the haze of her mind, real yet unreal.

"He's insane," she said at last. "Rational people don't behave as he does; they do not allow themselves to become so consumed by revenge." She set the bowl down, feeling the steam rise against her face, warm and cloying. "What is it that draws a man to the brink of madness? There is more to this story than he has told you, Mr Smee. I would stake my reputation on it."

"Don't let it trouble ye, Miss. He's a difficult man to understand, the Cap'n, and ye'll only drive yerself mad with wonderin'. Best t'just let it be."

_Sound advice, _thought Wendy. _Which I shall not be following._ "Perhaps you are right," was all she said aloud, and they spoke no more of it.

* * *

The sun had passed its zenith and raced westward in a blazing trail. The ocean waves were as she had seen them many times in her dreams, rolling hills of green light, strewn with wreaths of white foam. Lone rock islets lay in the distance, the cragged grey tops emerging from the deeps like ancient sentinels. The crying of sea-birds and the harsh voices of the crew reached her ears. The pirates were rough and coarse, broad-shouldered and bearded. Used to the men surrounding her to be as immaculately tailored as they were unvaryingly polite – high-collared dinner jackets and folded trousers, shirts of finely-pressed linen – Wendy was momentarily thrown by their lack of manners, appalled by their coarse way of speaking. She was too conscious of the difference in social standing, too conceited to offer the hand of friendship, even though doing so might have been of use. Instead, she ignored them with the effortless disregard that society called good breeding.

And yet…

Without seeming to, Wendy watched them engaged in trimming the sails, raking spars and handling the great wheel as the ship tossed on the high seas. In a strange way, she envied them, their steady sense of purpose. She thought of the duties that she was expected to perform in her own daily life: studying what was permitted just enough to be able to hold an educated conversation, shopping trips to Oxford Street, paying calls on acquaintances, attending society parties. All intended to prepare her for the sole ambition of marriage. Nothing to relieve her from the suffocating inertia, the one dream that she had harboured – to be a writer – deemed improper by her friends. All those long hours when she had been forced to remain seated in drawing rooms, head high, gracious manners, merely a decorative ornament, while her body and soul were being slowly crushed from her and her imagination was dwindling like the light from a dying candle…

She hungered for activity, she realized, not to be sitting around in idleness waiting for a rescue that might never come. Nothing was worse than this dreadful, interminable waiting. If she could only do _something – _

Her drifting gaze paused, lingering on a cabin larger than the rest and far more grandiose. Hook's quarters. An idea leapt into her head – dangerous, mad, irresistible – and held her in place. The captain had not emerged from his cabin all day and his absence was a great abyss that filled her with dread and a sickening, pervasive curiosity. Reason cautioned her to return to her cabin and not take such a foolish, impudent risk. Had she not been relating the cautionary tale of Bluebeard's wife only last night? But she was too intrigued. She had tasted the bitter edge of danger and had a strange thirst for more. Turning away was impossible. The prospect was too enticing to resist. Her heart thudded under the flesh of her ribcage. The blood beating hotly in her veins. Wendy drew a deep breath – salt and sharp winds and oiled leather – and felt a galvanizing surge of energy. She was young and strong, vital, tough. And he was…

A ghost she was unable to face down; of the deep seas, the abyss, of blue glass and cold iron. Inside her head, in her dreams, slowly taking over her thoughts, draining the life from her. This tearing feeling clawed beneath the strains of her corset, left her unable to breathe at the fear of him that she fought against with raw, animal instinct. She must master it, conquer it, and if he discovered her… well, she would worry about that when the time came. She must and _would_ see him, in the harsh light of day.

She drew nearer until she could feel the rough surface of the wall, the wooden beams warmed by the sun. She avoided the window that was only partly screened by velvet drapes. Movement was visible within. Wendy stood and listened for a moment, at first hearing nothing. She slid the shoes from the feet, holding them in one hand as she crept closer. A board creaked beneath her bare feet and she stilled, tense. Nothing. Then –

Low voices within. She could hear Smee's distinct Irish brogue, rapid and earnest. And in reply –

Her breath stopped. Smooth, fluid tones that she recognized immediately as belonging to the captain. Dark and liquid and daring. Taking her back to last night… _his hook at her throat, short white gasps of air against the coldcold_cold –

Her nerves heightened to a painful intensity, Wendy leaned in as far as she dared and listened, her ear pressed against the wood –

"…Become a nuisance ever since they allied themselves with Pan."

Smee cleared his throat. "Perhaps we'd best be cautious, Cap'n –"

"No…" Hook said thoughtfully. "No. Swift action is needed."

"The clouds threaten storms."

"A mere caprice. Pan's moods are changeable; it will clear. Do you have the map?"

There was the faint rustle of parchment and she heard a metallic _thud. _A hook slamming into the outspread paper.

"_There_," the captain murmured, "That series of narrow and enclosed coves would hide any approach. That is the weak point, the place to strike. It'll take caution, mind, and care. I'll have no blunders this time. You will inform the crew and make all ready for an attack when I give the word. Do you understand me, Smee? No failures."

So Hook had not been idle in solitude. She should have known he was planning something. The three days he had granted her was not a grace period bestowed from the kindness of his heart _(what heart did such a villain possess?) _but merely a chance for him to rally his forces and be the first to strike, taking down Peter's allies one by one. Even while her heart and lungs burned with loathing, Wendy could not help but feel a grudging admiration for his cunning. She heard the floorboards creak as someone moved around within. A shadow passed across the window, dimly visible in the space between the partly-drawn curtains. Wendy pressed herself against the wood, not daring to breathe. She caught a glimpse of claret brocade and long dark curls, dressed cavalier-style. There was a momentary flare of amber light. The faint smell of cigar smoke reached her faintly through the wall, cloying and aromatic. Clouding the glass. She leaned forward, desperate to hear more of what he intended, but the captain seemed to have exhausted the subject, swiftly changing the tide of the conversation.

"What of the girl?"

"Still out on the deck," replied Smee promptly.

"You've been watching her, I presume?" The tone was one of polite inquiry.

"Yes… just as you requested, Cap'n. But should we not send her back to her cabin, turn the key on her?"

"Why?" A careless laugh, rich and deep. "Do you fear for your safety, Smee? Or is it mine?" Wendy heard the creak of leather and supposed he had just sat down, long legs stretched out before him. She did not dare betray herself by chancing a look through the window. "Such a precaution is hardly necessary. There is nothing we need fear from Miss Darling. I spoke with her myself last night and found her nothing more than a proud, unpleasant, disagreeable girl."

The bo'sun said something in reply, too low for her to catch the words. The captain laughed again. "Even if she had the wits to suspect something, she has neither the courage nor the resolution – nor the means – to do anything. S'wounds, it's cowardice that makes you speak out, not caution. Only a gutless craven like you could be quaking at the thought of a mere girl. Pour me another drink."

Wendy listened unmoving, white-faced and silent. The only betrayal of emotion was the convulsive movement of the fists clenching at her sides. She vowed to remember those words – remember them so that one day she would make the captain rue the day he ever uttered them.

She heard an exclamation of annoyance and flinched at the sound of breaking glass. "I asked for port, you blithering oaf. What do you mean by giving me brandy?"

The sound of footsteps moved to the left and Wendy followed soundlessly, keeping her back to the wall. From the slow, dragging steps, she surmised it was the bo'sun moving, while the captain remained in place. She would have to pass by the window in order to keep the two men within earshot. Bracing herself, hands pressed against the wood behind her, she moved sidelong, cautiously looking through the narrow space granted by the parted curtains. She caught only the briefest glimpse of vague, shadowy outlines and impressions. A glowing cigar between slender fingers, a leg lazily propped up, recognizable by the languid yet rakish manner he slouched against the chair. That was Hook accounted for and her imagination could supply the rest. Too well she could picture the artistic contours of that hateful face, the plush velvet of his decadent attire. And the slower, clumsy movements of Smee, who continued talking all the while –

"I am only sayin', Cap'n, that it might not hurt to delay a few days. See if the weather changes. Look for signs of Pan. We've heard naught of his movements for weeks. You've waited seven years, Cap'n, a couple more days wouldn't hurt –"

"Are you questioning me?"

Wendy did not dare unclench her jaw. If she did, her teeth would begin to chatter.

The bo'sun, too, must have caught the silver thread of menace in Hook's tone, for he stammered and laughed nervously. "No – no, of course not. I was only thinkin' –"

"Smee…" murmured the captain dangerously, "You are forgetting your place."

That _voice. _Like a rapier dancing, beautiful, deadly, without mercy. The very sound of it sent uneasy currents surging through her. Wendy rested her head against the cabin, trying to cast off the reminders of her dream that clung to her mind like rigging in a shipwreck. Skin so pale it seemed to glow against the dark, waterlogged fabric. She closed her eyes, feeling sick and faint. Icy fingers dragging her down into the treacherous, murky depths…

A flash of light darted across her closed lids. Wendy started, swallowing down the shocked cry that rose to her lips. Bright as a fallen star, rapid and darting, almost too fast to see – but _unmistakable – _

"Tinker Bell," she breathed.

* * *

The light moved away down the corridor, waxing and waning. The kind of bewitching illumination that once might have led mariners to their doom. Wendy hesitated. The temptation to stay and try to discover what the captain was planning was almost overwhelming, but this might be her only chance to convey a message to Peter. With a sigh of frustration, she quietly pursued Tinker Bell into the sanctuary of her cabin, carefully closing the door behind her. She leaned back against it, eyes following the movements of the fairy that flashed like summer lightning, leaving fiery trails glittering in the room. The dresser. The window. The glass lantern –

Wendy darted forward, slamming the small door shut and fastening the tiny metal catch. A steam of incoherent words echoed against the glass like silver raindrops as the fairy helplessly pounded the door with small fists. She waited patiently until the tirade was over.

"You know me, I think. I am Wendy Darling."

No response, save for the beating of those wings, gossamer thin and filmy, more rapid than the flutter of a butterfly. That face, light and delicate as a flower, ever-changing, a rapid array of emotions passing over those vivid features in constantly varying shades and hues. Wendy sighed hopelessly. The fairy was forgetful as a child, as innocent and narcissistic as Peter himself. How could she have expected any of them to remember?

"You don't remember me."

That beautiful little face contorted in a vicious frown. Wendy was too much of a woman not to recognize the unmistakable flash of jealousy that lit the fairy's tiny form like an electric blaze.

"All right," she said. "So you do remember me. Good. Because I need your help. I want you to deliver a message to Peter for me."

A flash of movement. Haughtiness and fire and impulse. How galling it was, Wendy thought, to beg a favor of this infantile, vindictive creature. But she kept her voice steady and dignified. "I want you to tell him that Hook has Wendy. That Hook is returned – he has Wendy and Peter _must _rescue me. Once he comes, I can do the rest. I will leave Neverland at once and I'll not return. And believe me, there is nothing here I _want _to stay for." Those last words caught in her throat slightly but Wendy hardened her heart, indignant that she should even struggle over such a supremely simple decision. A few breaths of fresh air and a taste of self-reliance would not make a fool of her. It _would _not.

The fairy tilted her head to one side, considering, her glance full of lightning. Wendy dared not move in case any action would spark a change in that wayward, callous, elemental nature. She continued, quiet and self-assured, "Besides, Peter certainly won't want me around – as you see, I have quite grown up."

Silence. Wendy's expression was bland, serene. She held her breath. _Careful, careful. You almost have her._

"And I am sure he'll thank you. Imagine how grateful he will be when I tell him everything you did to help me."

A spark of hope lit the fairy's vivid, intent face. Fleeting, ephemeral, intangible. And finally – yes – a swift nod.

It was all the affirmation she needed. Wendy opened the glass door. Without a moment's hesitation, Tinker Bell disappeared in a tiny supernova of light, leaving behind nothing but a glimmering trail of fairy dust in her wake. It lay scattered across the floor, catching the light like the surface of water under a midday sun, or the glint of the first frost in winter. Wendy did not even observe the departure. Whether the fairy delivered the message was of no matter. She had gotten what she wanted. Her eyes fell on the fairy dust shimmering at her feet. Wendy knelt down and swept the glittering remnants into the palm of her hand and remained still for some moments, lost in thought. Slowly, she began to smile.

* * *

It was the revelry that drew her out from her room and onto the deck. The sounds of carousing, the shouting and singing, must have been audible from the distant shore, and the bright lights lit the _Jolly Roger_ like a beacon blazing in the darkness. Wendy blinked under the sudden glare as she emerged outside in the cold night air. A sense of relief filled her. If the pirates had so little care for being seen it meant that they were planning no attack – at least, not tonight – but on the other hand, it also meant they had no _fear _of being attacked; a sobering realisation that made Wendy aware she was aboard the greatest threat to Neverland. She shivered at the sudden chill that passed through her, and the thrill of adventure dispersed like mist through her fingers.

She leaned over the side of the deck, gazing pensively across the vast stretch of sea inlaid with watercolour swirls. The ocean was dark as black glass, the cosmos reflected in its smooth surface. Infinite and full of possibilities. It was a strange place to find such a sense of harmony, on an enemy ship adrift on the high-turning seas. Diamond bright stars flashed through the gauzy straits of cloud, wheeling nebulae turning over and over the moving seas. Wendy wondered whether she would catch lumen glimpses of mermaids riding the waves, aqua hair streaming in their wake. She imagined what it would be like to see pearls pulled fresh from the sea, gleaming iridescent pink and ivory in their shells, not merely aligned in pristine order in the window of a Bond Street jewellers. Everything here seemed brighter, more _real. _So far from the light, empty rooms and hollow routines she had lived in, untouchable, every emotion closed from her heart. And to think she might have stayed in Neverland, always at Peter's side…

Then flashed a sudden memory of dancing to the light of fairies and fireflies beneath a canopy of stars. Silently, she smiled. _My happy thought. _Had Peter's heart really been untouched in that moment? Was that the truth she had to accept? He could so easily forget her, this mocking child of no one, the boy she had carried in her heart for years ever since she kissed him (_had_ she kissed him?), the sensation light and burning as a hummingbird flutter against her mouth. A burst of naive, immature emotion. Playful and teasing and spirited – that was what romance should be. Not the shallow infatuation of Charles, nor the decadent hunger of – Wendy closed her eyes, forcing down the memory of a stirring, an awakening felt in the shadow of a dream. Instead, she thought of John buried in his books, Michael's love affairs, her mother patiently waiting at home for father's return... _It is the fate of women, _Wendy realised heavily, _not to love as men do – easily, fondly – but rather to suffer inwardly, to burn and be crushed beneath its overbearing weight. Men have so many other occupations, so many other lives outside the home, that love is merely a pleasing distraction. It is only to women, who have nothing else to occupy them, that love is an oppression, something we are doomed to suffer and die for. _It was better, far better to remain aloof and alone. To spurn admirers and scorn the romances her schoolmates devoured between classes. The idea of an intense, all-consuming passion terrified her. _I will never love again, _she told herself firmly. _Never. Not as I loved Peter._

She had opened her soul to him, and he… he… _(Pan has abandoned you, my beauty)_

This was the time for her childhood fantasy to materialize and guide her home. Her lips parted, a strange vulnerability wavering across her stiff, inflexible features. _Hear me, Peter. Find me._

But this was no story, and she was no fairytale princess to be awoken with a kiss. These things did not happen in real life. There was no happy ending. No fairy godmother. No handsome prince. _Love stories, _Hook had so contemptuously called them. And perhaps they were. Love stories with eternal youth and beautiful virgins encased in coffins of ice… _Skin white as snow, hair black as ebony, lips red as blood…_

Her fingers tightened on the acorn around her throat. The locket was empty no longer but now filled with fairy dust, her last resort should Peter not come. And if there was Tinker Bell and fairy dust, there was hope. _I know these things are real, that they exist. If Hook is alive, then so must Peter be, for one cannot live without the other…_

She sighed, resting her chin in her hand, her expression intent and meditative. _What is it you want, Wendy Darling?_

_I wanted to remain a child. Then I wanted to grow up. _

She had wanted to grow up, but not in a world where all the magic had flown away from her, back to Neverland where it belonged, leaving her hollow and empty. Aching for something gone from her that could never be reclaimed. It was heart-breaking, really; so many years gone by, so many things fallen into neglect.

Her mind went back to the nursery and she felt it again as she silently said farewell to her childhood – the overwhelming sorrow – that great weight, the moment of change –

Then _he _had come.

It seemed she was always doomed to find Hook. A demon who had cast a dark shadow over her existence; they were bound together by a mutual hatred for one another, a mutual obsession. Peter dominated both their lives, twisting them into a strange kind of affinity with one another. Was this what made him so ruthless, so full of hate? She recalled the terrifying bleakness in his expression as he had stood wreathed in snow on the balcony. _I don't need happiness. _His eyes filled with a drowning loneliness. Perhaps there was more sincerity in his offer than she had dared to admit. He was the shadow of which she could never flee. Wendy thought of his paralyzing touch of cool fire, of burning ice that she was unable to shake herself free of. To be bound to him, to this place, _forever…_

A roar of merriment jolted her from the unsettling thought. She glanced over at the crew seated together. Until now, she had merely ignored them with a proud, sovereign indifference. She studied their merrymaking through narrowed eyes, wondering at their rough, liberated ease. Something about the uninhibited Dionysian abandon was strangely appealing. Abandoning all duty and being free of all restraint…

Wendy stood and looked at them quietly, her chin slightly raised. Then, coming to a silent decision, she unhesitatingly walked over to the crew. Unconstrained by self-consciousness, it was easy for her to maintain a calm and collected demeanor. A riotous chorus greeted her ears as she approached.

"_Charlotte the harlot lay dying –"_

"Don't stop on my account," she said pleasantly.

The men looked uneasily at one another. The same expression, thought Wendy, as Michael always wore whenever he had been caught in some misdemeanor. She predicted the stream of excuses that immediately followed (was she always to play the role of mother, even to these great, lumbering brutes?)

"Don't be offended, Miss, we were only –"

"Don't tell the captain –"

"It was just a song –"

"I love a good song," said Wendy, surprising even herself with the unknown impulse that prompted the words.

Bill Jukes hesitated, flushing beneath his tattoos. "It's not really appropriate, Miss, you bein' a lady an' all…"

"And it is bad manners to turn down the request of a lady," she returned coldly.

"But the captain said -"

"Well, I don't see the captain anywhere, do you?" Wendy gave her most implacable smile, one that had been used to devastating effect in London drawing rooms. So unaccustomed to anything feminine aboard their ship, the pirates did not stand a chance against such an appeal.

The Italian Cecco started to laugh, dark eyes and strong white teeth flashing in the gloom. He reminded her of a wolf. A tanned, hungry wolf. "Well, I suppose one wouldn't hurt…"

Someone pushed a cup into her hands, the strong smell of the drink within making her eyes water. Wendy would have deigned not to notice it, but the memory of the captain's mocking face flashed through her mind, and on impulse, she lifted the cup and swallowed the contents. Someone roared in approval, but she was unable to identify who through the stinging tears that blurred her eyes. It tasted nothing like the various spirits adorning her father's liquor cabinet that she had once sampled at a dare from Michael on her fifteenth birthday. Her throat was burning like fire that coursed a blazing trail down to her stomach.

Crossing her legs under her, she sat and listened with reluctantly increasing interest as the men began another song.

"_Come, messmates, pass the bottle 'round  
Our time is short, remember,  
For our grog must stop,  
And our spirits drop,  
On the first day of September.  
For tonight we'll merry, merry be,  
For tonight we'll merry, merry be,  
For tonight we'll merry, merry be -"_

Wendy laughed in spite of herself, surprised by a sudden feeling of recklessness and daring. She stood up, and felt the deck sway alarmingly beneath her, the blood surging swiftly through her veins and dizzyingly to her head. She gripped at the side to keep from falling. The hint of derision that marred her voice came more from habit than genuine feeling: "Are all your songs about drinking?"

"Not all," said Cecco, to a roar of merriment. He winked at her and Wendy foolishly felt her cheeks burn with colour. She looked away quickly, striving to maintain an emotionless façade.

"_Roll your leg over  
__And roll your leg over  
__And roll your leg over  
__It's better that way  
__If all the young lass__es were boats on the ocean  
__Then I'd be the waves and I'd show 'em the motion -"_

Wendy's first instinct was to rise in outraged disbelief and be offended at the audacity of it when she wondered, with a sudden rush of vindictive pleasure, what Aunt Millicent would make of the respectable Miss Darling carousing with a group of pirates singing bawdy songs. Purely for the childish sake of being stubborn and contrary, she determined to remain exactly where she was and enjoy herself.

Some of her innate youth and spirits returned, and she found herself losing her customary inhibitions to the gaiety and mood of the company. The dim fog of dread that had been hovering over her all day lifted slightly. Clearly perceiving her as neither a threat nor a hindrance, the pirates went back to ignoring her, regarding her as they might a stray dog that could be thrown a few scraps and then happily overlooked. She, on the other hand, made a deliberate point of learning their names, one of the few talents acquired from the tedious number of formal gatherings she had attended that made having a good memory such an essential part of courtesy. She was almost beginning to forget the gravity of her situation when slowly, one by one, the voices gradually trailed off into uneasy silence. She looked for the source of the disturbance and realized it was the arrival of Mr Smee. His short-sighted eyes sought and found her among the crew, and Wendy thought she could detect a faint flicker of sympathy in those watery blue depths.

"The Cap'n invites you to dine with him."

And with those words, Wendy turned cold and knew what she had been dreading. It was as though that hook had already pierced flesh, twisted deep inside and touched her heart with its point. She glanced at the assembled crew. The air of festivity had fled at the mention of Hook, and she wondered uneasily how it was the captain had such a hold over them. She felt she could face Hook's men, if it came to that, but the captain was an unknown entity that filled her with fear and something else that wasn't fear at all – a strange, disturbing unease beneath the skin that she did not understand. The memory of his Cavalier appearance and erudite tones chilled her far more than the threat of crocodiles and cannon fire. Her tone was haughty and bored, though a barely discernible tremor ran beneath the surface. "Tell the captain I am otherwise engaged."

The bo'sun shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "The captain _orders _you to dine with him."

Wendy silently reprimanded herself for not having expected this. _Did you think you would be so fortunate as to have him forget you entirely? _Of course he would do something like this – delude her into thinking he would leave her in peace, only to then summon her to a dinner that would no doubt be a cruelly recreated reminder of her last visit (_capture)_ here, when she had fallen for his well-meaning words and alluring smiles. If this was an attempt to unnerve her, she was determined he would not succeed. She looked across at Mr Smee, affecting a careless, indifferent attitude, though her heart faltered within her. Inside, she felt sick and hopeless.

"Very well."

After all, what choice did she have?

* * *

She stood before the mirror in her room, straight and still in her gown of white lace. The sweeping folds of her dress hung stiff and discolored by the persistent lash of salt spray, though a faint hint of white musk perfume remained. Exposed to the elements of air and water, her hair had lost the tightly crimped perfection of sleek ringlets that last night had been so neatly piled in a shining coronet above her head. Now the hazel tresses were loose about her shoulders like Botticelli's Venus, windblown and tangled like snarled threads, with no restraining pins or beribboned hats to hold back its disorder. So far from the sumptuous dresses and heavy, coiled hairstyles that London adorned its women with. A parade of pristine, porcelain dolls, delicate as spun glass.

What would her family say if they could see her now? John would disappear behind his glasses, seeing nothing beyond the dusty pages of his books. Michael would look up, his attention caught briefly until some new amusement diverted him. Both were set on their paths to adulthood, while _she… _Even though she was the eldest, she was the most undeveloped, the most uncertain. Her future was shrouded in mystery.

Wendy's eyes fell on the love-locket nestled in the hollow of her throat. Her fingers traced the smooth-varnished acorn, flooded with thoughts of Peter. Where was he? Was he even now amassing the Lost Boys and the Indians together, delighting in the chance to wage another attack on Hook and to see _her _again? Or did he not care at all? Why had he not come already? Would she not, after all, be better to rely on the fairy dust and her own ingenuity? She could not deny that the thought of matching her own wits against the captain's was a strangely intriguing one…

Hook. He was around her, everywhere. His presence trembling through the darkening air, drifting in invisible clouds to form a ghostlike figure behind her own wavering reflection. The flash of lapis lazuli eyes and a vulpine smile turned her cold. It was as though she could already feel the chill of his fingers across the back of her neck, the sinuous silver thread of his voice whispering sweet nothings in her ear. A breath of air, like the touch of a forgotten lover's lips. She dreaded what the night might bring, trying not to think of what terrible things might happen when the blue lantern went out and she was forced from her sanctuary and finally, they would look upon one another, face to face. Wendy shuddered, and turned her face away from the mirror.

Night pressed against the windows like velvet curtains. The wavering lantern over her head was swinging with the ship's motion, a weak, guttering flame casting long shadows across the wall. She suddenly felt very cold and alone. No walls could protect her here.

She cast another gaze over her attire. The armor of a lady. Lace and satin, delicate pale shoes and silk stockings. White, like the snow outside the nursery, or the feathers on Tiger Lily's headdress, or the nightgown she had worn seven years ago. Robed like a sacrificial victim, long hair falling down her back. Wendy smiled, though beneath the scorn was a hint of fear. Glanced at herself in the mirror again, ran stiff fingers down the hard line of her corset and faced her reflection squarely.

"Coward!" she suddenly burst out accusingly. "Weakling! How dare you tremble before _him? _Do you want to be mocked, ridiculed, derided? Do you want to give him that power over you? If you cannot rise above fear, then hide it. Conceal it as you have concealed everything else."

_What would Peter do?_ She closed her eyes, strained to memorize every line and detail of his laughing, mocking face, the forest-green depths of his eyes –

There was a low tapping on her door. Wendy turned around._ This is it, _she thought with frightening calmness.

"I am ready," she said.

* * *

She ignored Smee's extended arm, walking stiffly past his waiting figure into the dim, narrow corridor, her shoulders erect. The bo'sun's shuffling gait sounded behind her, the lantern held in his raised hand swinging to and fro, casting a weaving path of uneasy light before her feet.

Wendy felt her heart beating faster as they approached, throbbing in tandem with her lungs. Her fingers toyed nervously with the netted lace and threaded ribbon at her chest. She had no idea what reception awaited her. Would the captain be polite or brutal? Courteous or violent? She could not say; all she knew was that hours of anticipation had heightened every nerve in her body to a painful tension, but whatever he was; whatever faced her behind that stylized, embossed door, she must crush the fear, force it down until it choked her. She lifted her head back, her haughty chin raised with a sense of stubborn resolution. Decision and roundness were marked in the outline of her face, her firmly set figure poised and steady. The bo'sun pushed the door open. Sudden memory gripped her, held her in its clutches. _Captain Jas. Hook _written in gilded letters across the dark wood and seven years had passed like a dream…

A red-cut glass chandelier swung on the ceiling. The light from the candles ebbing, pulsing in a soft glow of dusky gold and shadow. Mist blurred the windows. The air was musky, spicy, thick. Cutlasses, polished and gleaming, hung on the wall above the harpsichord. A small writing-table neatly stacked with reams of paper sat in the corner. Across the room, the crocodile's enormous head grinned at her. That part of Smee's story had been true, at least. The rest of the cabin was filled with all the typical trappings of piracy; piles of books, globes, tobacco pipes and snuff canisters. Reminiscent of the Renaissance galleons, that great age of exploration where peril and danger and treasure were still to be found on the high seas.

The coldly contemptuous expression in Wendy's eyes softened at the stacks of leather-bound tomes that greeted her interested gaze. Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot… why, his library collection resembled John's, although she was fairly certain that John had never owned a copy of _Les Liaisons Dangereuses, _Huysmans' _Against Nature: A Rebours, _or anything written by the Marquis de Sade. The captain clearly had a predilection for French literature, and there was something in his elegantly cultured affectations that was vaguely reminiscent of that country and era.

She gave an involuntary start, the rigid line of her shoulders stiffening as someone cleared their throat behind her. She felt a fixed gaze on her back, stripping the fabric of skin, piercing right through to the bone. Her heart quivered, missed a beat.

Wendy turned, slowly, and her eyes met those of the captain.

* * *

**Every time you don't review, a fairy dies. It is known.**


	3. Day 1: Part 2

**FORGET-ME-NOT**

_Your silver grin, still sticking it in  
The longest kiss, your loaded smiles  
Drift madly to you  
Pollute my heart drain  
You have broken in me  
Broken me_

_All your mental armour drags me down  
We can't breathe when you come around  
All your mental armour drags me down  
Nothing hurts like your mouth_

('Mouth', Bush)

* * *

**- Day 1 –**

**Part II**

He was reclined at ease in a baroque seat that had been pulled up at the lavishly spread table. Deep blue eyes reflected the soft light of the room, narrowed slightly as he regarded her with a deceptive kind of lazy watchfulness. Alabaster skin, shadows deepening the delicate contours of his face. Coils of opulent, midnight black hair smoothly rolled over the shoulders of his wine-coloured coat trimmed with gold thread. There was white lace at his throat and wrists. He was immaculately turned out as ever when she had seen him and would have been at home in the finest parlors were it not for the hook sharpened with deadly precision, glimmering redly under the coloured glass of the chandelier.

"Exquisite." He smiled. The hook glided in a sweeping arc as he gestured to the vacant seat opposite his own. "Sit down."

Wendy hesitated.

The lamps cast a delicate web of soft light over the table, turning the plates the shade of pale coral, glancing off the delicate crystalline curves of the wineglasses, falling on the decanter of ruby-red liquid that glowed like a scarlet flame under the hanging chandelier. As though in apology for the plain fare she had eaten with the bo'sun, the plates and bowls were piled high with delicacies; lobster and mussels, truffles and turtles' eggs, palm hearts and pickled onions, spiced wine, and honey cakes flavored with cane syrup and nutmeg. It seemed the captain hoarded the finer things on the ship for himself. She could not help but feel a reluctant admiration for the effort that had been made _(for your benefit, _a treacherous inner voice whispered that she willed herself to ignore).

She looked uncertainly at the dishes spread out before her. It was unlikely they were poisoned, something the captain would doubtless regard as _bad form. _And if he was intending to kill her, he would have done so already. He would have cut her throat on the balcony last night. _He almost did, _she reminded herself, recalling with a shiver that cold, cold touch of silver_._ The memory was a chilling one. She sat down without argument.

Hook lazily held out a two-pronged cigar holder, which Smee obligingly lit. Wendy, who hated smoking, looked on the display with resigned disdain. Perhaps, then, this would not be so different from London. Perhaps, after all, she could get through this dinner without screaming or succumbing to the humiliation of hysterics.

The captain exhaled leisurely, settling his gaze on Wendy, blue eyes glittering through a cloud of smoke. "I hope you've been enjoying my hospitality."

"Yes," she said, anxiety making her tones clipped and terse. "It's a very nice prison."

"Surely it is not so terrible? Have you found nothing to please you, nothing to your taste?"

She looked away from his troublingly perceptive gaze, searching for something to say. Speech was less disconcerting than silence. "I noticed your library. You have a fine collection."

"Hmm." He settled back in his seat, regarding her archly. "You like Baudelaire?"

"I admire his interest in moral complexity." _Like reading a soul. _Not that a soulless being such as he could hope to understand the depths and fascination she found within those pages.

He leaned forward, locks of black hair falling slick around his face. "And what of his thoughts on vice? Decadence?"

His voice_…_ crafted in malevolence, yet sublimely soft, like a cello, or an ocean, or like his eyes – so utterly _him. _It unnerved and spiraled her into madness, and Wendy's firm accents wavered.

"I think you know more of the subject than I."

"For now."

The silence between them was a taut silver wire. That magnetic force held her captivated, drawn, unwillingly bound to listen to every word that fell from those lips that parted, red and thin as a razor cut, startling against the pallor of his hollowed, drawn cheeks. His curving, elusive smile was filled with hidden meaning, distracting.

The clatter of crockery loudly interrupted the pervasive quiet, startling Wendy, whose nerves were already on edge. She murmured a thanks to Smee, who laid a before her a dish of rich food she doubted she could face with the tightening, twisting feeling in her stomach. She heard Hook hiss an exhalation through his teeth. His head had jerked, as though he too had forgotten the bo'sun's presence. Annoyance flashed across his features. He sharply rapped the table with a metallic _clink. _"Out, Smee."

Hearing the door quietly close, Wendy swallowed hard. She was left alone with her greatest fear.

Unwillingly, she raised her gaze to where the captain sat before her, still and smooth as an oil painting. Ivory, sapphire and onyx. Studiously aristocratic, lips curved in a line of perfect arrogance. Perfectly at ease in the dissolute surroundings. A decanter of jewel-red wine sat beside him. He gestured at the glass pitcher with a delicate hand, one of those darkly artistic movements that came so naturally to him. "Drink?"

Wendy shook her head, her mind flashing back to whatever _grog _it was thatshe had swallowed out on the deck (_what _had she been thinking?)

He lifted a dark brow, the finest sweep of a calligraphic brush. Behind those deceptive forget-me-not eyes, she was certain he was laughing at her, and furthermore, knew exactly what she had been doing before his invitation. She wondered whether anything happened on this ship that he wasn't aware of. Stiffly, Wendy took the proffered glass from him with icy courtesy. His slender fingers slid lightly along her own, lingering just a moment longer than etiquette demanded. That enticing touch froze through her. Soft silk welded to metal. Shaken out of her enforced composure, her trembling hand raised the glass of wine to her lips. Deep and sanguine, it coursed warmth through her veins.

A glimmer of amusement lit Hook's pale features. He raised his own glass to her and followed suit.

"It seems you have been charming my men," he said.

She was not sure whether this was a compliment or insult, so answered cautiously, "They were only singing."

"What _fun._"

His tone of mockery grated on her highly-strung nerves. "At least_ they_ know how to treat a lady," she returned, her tone at its most supercilious. The words left her before she could prevent them, and her eyes flew to his in apprehension, remembering his cold cruelty of the preceding night when she had dared provoke him.

But the captain merely smiled at her momentary flash of spirit. "I would not be so sure."

_I would rather take my chances with them than be left alone with you for five minutes, _Wendy thought_. _"Your crew did not manhandle and kidnap me," she pointed out. "Clearly they have more courtesy toward women than you." She squared her shoulders, forcing herself to meet his gaze directly. But the soft white hands held in her lap beneath the table trembled.

"I didn't hurt you last night, did I?" Were it not for the amused irony in his tone, the question could almost have been one of concern.

"No," Wendy conceded reluctantly, silently loathing the way he insisted on treating her as a petulant child. "But I'm not used to being treated in such a manner."

"I suppose you are not." The captain smiled slowly, leaning forward slightly on his chair. A gleam of secret amusement in his eyes. He continued smoothly. "It's not often we entertain a guest on board who makes the crew sit up a little straighter and mind their manners."

"Guest?" she responded quickly, wondering just how far she would chance defying him. "I was under the impression I was your prisoner."

"Were you?" said Hook, putting an opaque veil of cigar smoke between them. "How dramatic."

_How I loathe him, _thought Wendy. _He truly is despicable, with his sneering face and meaning smiles. Even his politeness is a mockery. _He seemed to take delight in humiliating her, and she was determined to give him no further opportunity to do so.

The candlelight glinted in his eyes, adding a deceptive warmth to those frozen depths. Looking into them was like being stranded in a sea of ice. Again, that flash of memory – chill fingers entwining in her hair, sharp as ice-tipped needles, and the searing sensation of sweet pain, death and annihilation. Foreboding words breathed against her stinging skin. _You are my obsession._

How masterful it was, his acting the part of the bored aristocrat, concealing his dark intentions beneath veils of elaborate courtesy and cleverly disguised audacities. Cool words dripping courteously off the tongue. While Wendy, outwardly composed and unperturbed, toyed with the dishes set before her as though they occupied her full attention. He could not know _(would never know)_ how her heart was palpitating beneath the sheath of fragile lace.

"It is a long time, Wendy Darling, since I have had the pleasure of you dining with me. The company of the crew becomes somewhat… _tedious_." His voice was a lulling ambience, low and sweet as poison. Heady as the rich wine that coursed through her veins.

"I found them all perfectly good company," she said with a straight face, determined not to be so easily provoked by him.

"Did you indeed?"

Wendy looked at him with dislike. He was reclined like a cat at ease – idle, indolently graceful, voluptuous from warmth and indulgence. She could not deny he held the advantage, here, in his own surroundings, with the mastery of an entire crew and the power he wielded over her fragile, flimsy life. That she could never forget, no matter how smooth and eloquent and courteous he might appear, a virtuoso with his erudite words, savouring art and culture like fine wine. The very grandiosity and lavishness seemed all the more awful in comparison, as it served only in hiding the horror, but the sense of malevolence lingered beneath the surface, prevalent in every shadow.

"You have been aboard this ship for a full day now. You must have questions."

Wendy was immediately suspicious, wondering if this exhibition of direct candor was a means of luring her into a false sense of security. She had thought to drop some innocent questions concerning the vague hints she had overheard in the cabin earlier that afternoon and try to discover more information on this impending raid, but she could not summon the cunning or the craft to do so without betraying what she already knew. Away from him, amid the bracing winds on the clear deck, she had held a mastery over herself, was able to plan and strategize and not succumb to the girlish weakness of terror, but _now.._. her mind felt hazy, disorientated, as much from the potent wine as the dangerous man sitting across from her. Dark, and full of mysterious shadows. It irked and worried her, this loss of her usual self-assurance, and she could not rationalize or justify it to herself. But she was not about to be disarmed by a show of politeness.

And yet, the first words that left her were the ones that had been haunting her, lingering at the back of her mind for the last twenty-four hours. "Why me?"

"I thought that would be apparent."

Despair sank heavily within her. An anchor she had borne her entire life. Her _femininity, _the reason she was being pressured into an engagement she had no desire for, the reason she had been so easily manipulated because of her feelings for Peter, the reason why Hook had succeeded in taking her once more with such effortlessness. Too stubborn to make friends with young women of her own age, and drawing her experience primarily from the heroines that peopled her novels, Wendy had come to the damning conclusion that all girls were weak, silly, frail creatures, and she herself no different, bound as she was by the frustrating limitations of her sex. The only exception that escaped her harsh condemnation was Mother, Mother who was beautiful and faultless, and carried herself with a refined grace and soft dignity that held her apart as something almost divine. So she answered with weary resignation. "Because I am a girl. Weaker. Easily led. More susceptible to emotion."

Those sea-blue eyes flashed a glance on her – he seemed genuinely surprised by her answer. "Are you always so disparaging of your own sex?"

"You must think so too. Why else would you have taken me instead of my brothers?"

"Why indeed?" he murmured half to himself, dark brows drawing together, a momentary expression of concern clouding his features. It passed at once; he took another long draught of wine and smiled at her disarmingly. Wendy, who was painfully aware of his every movement, watching him with the wary cunning of cornered prey, did not smile back. She was too preoccupied with her thoughts.

What would her brothers do, if they were seated in this cabin instead of her? The answer came at once. John would rely on his intelligence; Michael would brazen out the situation with his careless audacity. And both could, at last resort, turn to violence. She could not hope to… it was impossible… he would overpower her in moments…

Unconsciously, she flexed her wrist. Glanced downwards. The dinner knife she held was light and thin; the smooth, faintly curving blade would barely cut a tear through his brocade jacket, let alone cause any lasting injury. But the silver candlestick at her elbow… It was a heavy and baroque ornament; if swung with enough energy, it could inflict quite a blow… enough perhaps to unsteady him while she fled for the door… but then how to get past the crew and reach the shore? Well, the fairy dust was concealed away in the hollow of her throat. She needed only to reach the deck and she would have the freedom to use it. Wendy set her glass down on the table. She looked somewhat thoughtful and a little pale, but not enough to betray the thoughts running through her mind. A strange, restless excitement set her heart beating faster and faster. The possibility grew in her mind, taking shape and substance. She could do it. Strike him across the temples, hard enough to draw blood. But had she the nerve? Her small, soft hands, unused to any tasks other than embroidery and writing and handling tea-sets were now going to attempt to fight _him, _of all people...

Her hand inched forward a fraction. She watched the captain warily from the corner of her eye. He was drawing a deep inhalation from a Cuban cigar, his long body reclining languidly in the ornately-backed chair. Relaxed and entirely unprepared. This might be her only chance.

_Do it. Now._

Her fingers curled around the candlestick. Adrenaline shivered through her body. Oh, he was going to make her pay for this… her grip tightened – _goodbye, captain – _

"Try it, dear girl, and you will regret it."

Wendy froze, mid-motion. She did not need to look up to know that those blue eyes were fixed on her with unwavering intensity. Her fingers relaxed their hold and slid, bloodless and trembling, to her lap.

"Oh yes," Hook breathed, "I can see I'm going to have to watch you."

For some minutes there was no sound but the tinkle of glass and silver and porcelain. She could not eat. Her throat was too tight to swallow. Every mouthful choked her. Outwardly, she was able to maintain a semblance of calm and control, but _inside_ –

It would be easy to seek refuge in another glass of wine, merely to calm her agitated nerves, but she had seen too often the effect of strong drink on Michael as he stumbled into the house at an ungodly hour, whispering with clumsy affection beneath her icily scornful gaze, "Keep this one between us, eh, Wendy? I know I can always count on you." No; she must maintain full control over herself. One false move and the captain could end her existence in a moment.

Her eyes fell on the gold laced curlicues at his collar. Drawn unwillingly upwards, past the pale column of his throat to the sloping contours of his face, sensual and cruel. The indulgent, lazy mockery had left his expression; he sat up a little straighter, an alert intelligence lighting his cold, piercing eyes.

"And, in answer to your question, I thought I made it clear on our last meeting. Galling as it was for me to admit, you were instrumental in my defeat. I saw an opportunity for revenge, and a means to turn my enemies against one another." A cool, cruel smile. "And if I recall, you did not seem… _unwilling_ to be taken."

How arrogant he was. Did his conceit know no bounds? Her fingers tightened on her knife, trembling with icy anger. "A preposterous assumption."

"Then what, I wonder, induced Wendy Darling to open the window on such a bleak night?"

Her mind flew back to the nursery. _A coldness and despair, deeper than she had ever known, filled with an unnamable desire to cast off all constraining ties and step out of her old self, reaching for something otherworldly and beautiful – _

She remembered to breathe and shook her head. "Nothing in particular."

"No?" He glanced at her over the crystal rim of his glass.

Perhaps it was the soft candlelight, or the wine and rich truffles making her drowsy and warm, making her forgetful of the caution she had trained herself to, but Wendy found herself saying truthfully, "I did not wish to be married."

"Quite understandable. Marriage is such a _bothersome _institution." He smiled in response to her startled look. "Oh, yes. I had four wives, at last count."

"That's quite a number." Her tone deliberately matched his for indifference. "Where are they now?"

He shrugged with elaborate carelessness. "One loses track. And of course it would be quite impossible to keep a woman on board."

"Because it brings ill-fortune?" Wendy made no attempt to conceal the scorn in her voice.

Hook laughed merrily. "A mere fabrication. In truth, having a woman on board has a tendency to distract the crew from their – ah – _duties, _so it pays to play upon their superstitions_. _Besides, I've yet to encounter a woman who would take to this kind of life – it's a hard existence, and an unrewarding one at that. And they all seem so _squeamish _at the idea of piracy."

Wendy said nothing. She busied herself with prying the soft meat from her oyster, annoyed at the shaking of her hands (_what _was wrong with her fingers?). Her eyes remained concentrated on the dish before her, his words ringing in her ears. The idea of someone like James Hook being married was strange and unsettling. She could not imagine him as a husband. A lover, certainly; his reckless and dissolute mien fitted him for the role perfectly. Such lewd behavior was certainly in keeping with his villainous character. Yes, she could vividly imagine him; depraved and sensual. But beyond that, her sheltered mind could not venture. She was left with nothing but speculation. Would he be cruel or tender? Charming or callous? How many mistresses might he boast of even now?

Well, she did not care; it meant nothing to her. He could do as he pleased; such immoral values perfectly aligned with her view of him. There was no reason for it to bother her. And yet, the discovery was almost a relief. Socially and intellectually he might be her equal; but morally, she was superior to him in every way. Wendy looked at him across the table, her face white and scornful. Her full, prim mouth a curve of quiet disdain. Something in her expression must have irritated him; his ruffled hand clenched perceptibly around the thin-stemmed glass, though he forced a smile, never breaking that thin façade of courtesy.

"And why must you marry?"

"Because it is expected of me. And I do not wish to disappoint my family."

"Why?"

"Because I love them." Wendy immediately flushed, realizing how childishly foolish she had sounded. This man, so cruel and lacking in tenderness, would only laugh at her sentimentality, preying on it as another weakness. She fell silent, refusing to glance at him. She felt sullen and unhappy, and braced herself, waiting for his inevitable mockery.

"Love." Hook exhaled languidly. Clouds of tobacco swirled around her in a scented haze. To her surprise, he did not laugh or ridicule her as she had expected, but instead sounded thoughtful, reflective. "Such an inconvenient emotion. You will find life becomes far easier when you love no one."

"Like you?" she asked, unable to help herself.

He smiled evenly. "Yes, dear girl. Like me."

Her mind worked, summoning an argument against his natural eloquence, but there was a pervasive logic to his smoothly compelling words that was difficult to resist. There was a grim sort of truth in them. To be bound by the expectations of family was a shackle around her ankle. On this ship at least, there was a certain emboldening satisfaction in her struggle with captain as she had the conviction that she _would _have the better of him in the end, but at home, how could she win a battle in which there were no discernible enemies or villains? Frustration burned within her. Was she always to be curbed and kept down? She was not the pristine, delicate flower everyone thought her back in Bloomsbury, a beautiful, frail creature destined for nothing more than a respectable marriage. She was stronger than she looked; she was certain of that. But she was trapped, like a bird in a cage, beating her wings helplessly against the bars. She just needed a chance, an opportunity to prove that there was more to this – to _her _– than that stifling, suffocating life back in London, that imminent engagement that would confine and clip her wings forever. Even if she defied her parents' wishes and Aunt Millicent's demands, there would only be another Charles a few months or years later, another potential husband, and she would be older, more worn down, and eventually resign herself to her inevitable fate. Frightened and frustrated, overwhelmed by the events not only of the last twenty-four hours, but also the circumstances that had brought her here in the first place, her carefully constructed barriers broke down, and the words poured from her in a torrent.

"I'm not living my life," she said desperately, the months and years of concealed resentment finally breaking through her guarded exterior, "I am living _their_ life; the one they have planned out for me. I had thought there could be a kind of beauty to growing up – to feel things more fully, to have control over one's destiny. I didn't bargain for this. I don't want it. I cannot look ahead or make plans, because this engagement had closed around me like a trap and my life will be over before it has even begun. There _must _be more. I am strong – _capable, _if they will only allow me to show it. I want to experience life fully, to have it _mean _something. To… travel the world, see and live something beyond London –"

"Then why not leave?" he said simply. "If you are so certain of your own mind?" A dark grin unfurled across his face. "Why not abandon a restrictive life of social tedium and turn instead to piracy?"

The startling question brought Wendy back to herself at once, her eyes drawn almost unwillingly to the magnetic presence of the man opposite her, unnerved by his troubling intimacy. Lulled by the soothing ambience as the wine sank lower in the decanter, the soft rosy light and lavish spread that seemed to invite the gratification of the senses, her guard had momentarily faltered… she had seen for herself the man was a hedonist and was suddenly appalled at the sly expectation that gleamed and glittered in his eyes. She had betrayed too much of herself, sacrificed her caution and reason all because of a melodic voice and drowning gaze. And, as always, when uncomfortable, she became more cold and formal than ever, retreating into herself and seeking refuge in aloofness. Her chin held high and her eyes narrowed, she rallied herself.

"What a ridiculous question."

"You once thought it a generous offer."

Wendy flushed to hear her own words repeated back to her. Something wavered inside her. She wondered with a sinking heart whether he thought her nothing more than a naïve, idealistic socialite, merely bored with the dances and theatres and soirees London had to offer and looking for another idle diversion. He could not hope to understand the things she had once dreamed, the hopes she had cherished and lost, the disappointments suffered and broken hearts survived. She took a steadying breath. The candles burned steadily, their fragrant musk spilling into the heavy air.

"I once thought a lot of things."

"My, how guarded you are. And you were such an impulsive child."

Wendy could hardly suppress the sigh of regret that rose inside her as she realized how far she had strayed from the girl she once was. She could not escape that sense that there was something inside her waiting to be awakened; she was _more _than the life that had been planned out for her. She needed something beyond marriage and domesticity, hiring servants and planning menus and writing obligatory correspondence. The tedium minutiae of Edwardian life was choking her. And yet… she had _allowed _herself to be taken over by the suffocating banality of such an existence, had succumbed without a struggle. She had closed the drawer of her own free will. _I lost my dreams, _she realized forlornly. _I lost that little girl._

"Children grow up," she said, hoping the ache of sadness and disappointment did not betray itself in her wistful voice.

"Don't they just."

Though it was hot, she shivered. She felt his prodding attempts at intimacy (_finding a weakness) _like the insistent press of his hook digging into her skin, prying away her flesh and finding the heart and bone beneath.

Another piercing stab at her soul. "Do you still tell stories?"

"Do you still shoot your crew?" she returned swiftly.

"Only when they bother me. Which is rather frequently."

Wendy sat very still, her hands curled around the sides of her chair. He had just blithely confessed to murder as though it were nothing, no more than a mere inconvenience instead of the taking of another man's life. And he could take hers at any moment – she had witnessed the swift changes of mood before, and for all she knew, this tone of intimate confidence was merely a prelude to something far more deadly.

She folded her hands in her lap. Her voice was still controlled, but barely. "Do you mean to frighten me, by speaking like this?"

"Do you fear me, Wendy?" For once, he looked genuinely curious.

She hesitated a moment, unsure how to answer. A firm and ringing denial was what she wished to respond with, but the words somehow could not reach her lips. The truth was, she _did _fear him, or rather, something about him - that cruel, cutting quality, sharp as a finely-honed knife, which flashed through the smooth manners and aristocratic gentility. His meticulous politeness would have charmed even Aunt Millicent were it not for that subtle undercurrent of danger that glimmered beneath the polished exterior.

Wendy toyed with the glass in her hand, measuring her words carefully. The wine tilted, dark as blood in its crystal prison.

"I think you're vile," she said at last. "The pirates out there – coarse and unsophisticated they may be - are at least honest about what they are. But _this_ -" she waved a hand at the baroque and ornately furnished cabin – "is all show and pretense. You hide behind your education and your cultured tastes and your adornments of luxury, and you are worse than any of them."

"So villainy and finery are not allowed to go hand in hand, is that it? Would you prefer it if this cabin were a den of smuggled goods and I sullied your honour before forcing you to walk the plank?"

_Yes, _she almost said, because this grace and delicacy seemed to have a sinister undertone; there was always the latent potential for ruthlessness, the uneasy sense that politeness and charm could turn to violence and murder in a matter of moments. If he had acted with ferocity and brutality, at least she would have known where she stood and could have fought back. But this thin line of courtesy bordering on the edge of cruelty was far more insidious. She couldn't help but feel he was toying with her, straining her nerves to the last limit. A frown furrowed her brow, which did not escape his astute gaze.

"Do you never smile, Wendy Darling? Never mind, I have my answer."

"Not many captors are so interested in the well-being of their captives."

"Not many captives hold such a degree of… _leverage_."

At his words, awful realization flashed on her. All this time she thought she had succeeded in goading Hook into granting her three days respite, when all the while she had given him exactly what he wanted. _Me._ How could she have not seen it before? She was to be the means by which he would lure Peter here. Wendy's heart sank hopelessly within her. Speaking with Tinker Bell, asking her to bring Peter to come and save her… like a fool, she had played into the captain's hands. Was there any move she could make that he hadn't already anticipated? Her gaze was accusing. "You think he _will _come."

"Oh yes, my Darling girl," Hook breathed. That low, rich voice like dark wine. "As a matter of fact, I am counting on it."

Dread ran through her, as deep and primal as the night she had first lain eyes on him at the Black Castle. The same thrill, but maturer, dangerous. She struggled to keep her voice even. "So you will use me to kill Peter. What then?"

"Then I'm going to string him up from the mast. Do try the lobster."

"But why?"

"It was only caught this morning. It's quite delicious."

"No." Her throat was tight. "Why are you going to kill Peter?"

Momentary silence. Thin ribbons of smoke curled around her. She drew an unsteady breath. The air was heavy with perfumes, sweet as opium, and had a soul-intoxicating effect, like the bright wine rolling drop by drop through her body, firing the blood and clouding the mind. His face the clearest thing amid the warm obscurity, glowing palely beneath the dull, soft illumination of the Empire chandelier.

"I dream of vengeance," he murmured. "It warms my heart."

Wendy shivered at the hint of malice in his voice. But curiosity was the prevailing impulse inside her now, as she realized for the first time that she could question the dark figure who had haunted her childhood. Undeterred, and emboldened perhaps by the wine that burned her insides like a low flame, she persisted with steady directness, "I want you to look at me and answer me this. Why are you so half-hearted about it? You say you want Peter dead, and while I am no villain and know nothing of piracy, my imagination could come up with any number of ideas. You could set fires on the island, you could torture any of his friends, you could do almost anything, but you don't. Why?" Caution raged at her to be silent. Why was she telling him these things?

"Why do you think?" His voice was low.

"The game," she whispered, realising. "It would be too easy otherwise. You want the challenge."

His eyes glinted but he said nothing. She took his silence for assent. Her fingers unconsciously drummed a nervous rhythm on the rim of her glass as she continued, beginning to understand, "I think if you actually did kill Peter, you would be bored, without meaning. Without him, there would be no purpose for you here. You need the risk, the danger that piracy brings. You need someone to fight."

"No." Ice-blue eyes burned into her. "I need someone to master."

"Why do you want revenge on him so badly? It's not merely your hand. It runs far deeper; I can see that."

"Come now, surely you must begin to have some idea? Even in your short life, you've experienced the passing of years, how wearing it can be."

"You're jealous of him." It wasn't a question.

"Age brings regrets, weariness, disillusion. Pan is unshackled by such… misfortunes. He lives forever in the careless joys of youth while I am bound by the regrets of maturity. To be an adult in Neverland is such a tragic fate."

"Yes. I rather think it must be." She sighed, thinking of the warm camaraderie between the Lost Boys and how she had always been somehow separate from that easy bond, whether because she was a girl, or because even then she had been more grown-up than any of them. More _willing _to grow up _(but that was before I knew what it meant)_. She thought of the large rooms and empty spaces that occupied her existence. "It must be awfully lonely."

"A torment," he whispered.

Wendy looked up, and a flash of affinity passed between them, strange and unsettling, and it shook her to the core. His compelling blue stare unfathomable, yet searching _(desperate) _for something unknowable in her own faltering gaze. _He understands, _she realized, disturbed. The heartbreaking isolation of adulthood, to be left adrift and abandoned, searching for meaning in a cold, uncaring world, once-cherished dreams turning to mist and falling away into a life forgotten. Crying inwardly, aching for connection and _completion, _the soul's search for fulfillment. An impossible journey. Wendy broke that empathetic gaze, her mouth tightening. She refused to acknowledge the feeling stirring at the edges of her heart, whispering to her with insidious persuasion. It was too much like pity (too much like longing).

She was relieved when he broke the warm, languid silence. "But in your case, I think it becomes you rather well." The candle flame played shadows across his elusive features. His eyes had darkened to midnight blue. She did not dare ask what he was thinking. To think of him as a man was far more frightening than to think of him as a ghost. She hurriedly searched for a change of subject, grasping at the precious memory of Peter to give her strength, to remind her forcefully why she hated and despised this man with every part of her being (and why she would never, _never _pity him).

"So you envy him. That is no reason to torture and persecute him."

A spasm of something like pain passed across his face – startling, bleak, terrifying – reminiscent of the expression she had glimpsed that first night, that had filled her with such unnamable fear. "Torture? Careful, my dear girl. You are straying into dangerous waters. You know nothing of torture, what I have endured."

Wendy looked back at him and said nothing. _I only hope it hurt, _she thought fervently_._

Her expression must have betrayed her, for the captain flashed upon it in an instant. "Ah," he said. "Not so indifferent, after all? You'd like to see me at the bottom of the ocean again, wouldn't you? Trapped in the depths with crocodiles devouring my flesh." His eyes hardened to steel edges, his hand clenching convulsively around the crystal stem of his wineglass. "Well not this time, my beauty."

"Is that what happened down there?" The words had been burning within her ever since he had appeared at the nursery window last night. The impossibility of him sitting before her, unharmed, unaltered. Her dream, her nightmare.

He did not answer at once, but regarded her contemplatively, his blue eyes cold and dark. A bitter smile twisted his narrow mouth.

"What have you seen of Neverland?"

"The Mysterious River, the Mermaid's lagoon, Slightly Gulch…" She recited the enchanting names that were stored in her memory like secret treasures. "The Black Castle." _(Where I first met you and knew you to be deadly…)_

"And beyond the island?"

"Only here."

"Then you are fortunate. There are far darker places that your imagination has not yet discovered. Places where voyagers have gone mad with despair, where you slit an enemy's throat and he rises again as though unharmed. You ask why I want revenge. Suffice it to say if this ship sailed into those unknown sights that you would lose your pretty face, and you would dream of vengeance, as I have dreamed of it these long years."

Her curiosity was roused to a painful intensity, and a thin, intrinsic fear began winding its cold way down her spine. The candles burned lower, shadows of smoke wreathing a thin veil over the table like sea-mist, gathering darkness around the pale, high-boned face of the captain. Ghastly, it seemed, and ghostly in the elusive illumination, as though lit from the blue-green lights that lingered at the bottom of the ocean.

"It was that infernal crocodile that did it for me," he murmured hoarsely. "It dragged me down to the places where dead men dwell with things that move in the deep. Things stranger than mermaids and more deadly. It's no place for the living. I see them even now, looking at me with their white-green faces and hollow eyes and seaweed for hair… brimstone and gall, I've killed men easy as breathing, and the dead can't harm the living… but beneath the water, it's another story…"

He leaned forward, black hair falling darkly around his pallid face. His wine-dark coat glowed like splashes of blood against the lurid paleness of his skin. Those terrible eyes burned colder than anything she had ever seen. "Seven years I endured down there… men speak of hells, but let me tell you something – it's lies, all lies. Hell is not red, Wendy. It's blue. It is the deepest, deepest blue."

Silence. The candles flickered, shrouding his features in obscurity. Wendy suddenly recalled her dream; the image of his dark form rising from the water, macabre, grinning and long-drowned, sodden with decay and reaching out for her with a cold, dead hand. Her clenched knuckles were white against the sides of her chair, frozen with deadly horror. She could hardly move for fear.

"That story you told Smee is complete nonsense, isn't it?" she managed to whisper at last. "Why did you lie? What really happened down there?"

Hook looked across the table at her, his narrow gaze unsmiling. He lowered his glass slowly, carefully placing it down on the polished wood surface. "No, Wendy Darling," he said at length. "I'll not reveal my secrets to you. You'd like to know them, wouldn't you? With your calm, reserved face, you must gather all manner of stories, but you'll not have mine - not tonight, anyway. It is a tale I fear you would not like." His smile was horrible. "And dead men tell no tales."

Wendy felt sick and icy-cold. A clamminess had stolen over her hands and brow. She wanted to run, hard and fast, to escape the terrible nemesis that was Captain James Hook, a haunting presence that even death could not hold down. He had always been with her, always hovered on the fringes of her consciousness, a chilling whisper in the back of her mind that pursued her into sleep and would allow her no rest (_why are you haunting me?) _How could she have imagined she could stand against him? She wanted to flee to her cabin – go and bar the door and cover her head with the blankets to drown him out. What Devil's bargain had he made to rise from the deeps?

_Dead men tell no tales._

She knew only one thing – she could not remain here a moment longer. If she stayed another night on this ship, she would go mad. The fairy dust hung in its casement around her neck. Therein lay her secret weapon, and hope for escape. There was a chance, albeit a slim one. If she could only hold off the captain and break free from the cabin long enough to flee to the deck and think _one happy thought _harder than she had ever thought of anything in her life... it must be now. If she waited any longer, she would lose her nerve. If she failed, he would probably kill her, but if Peter did not come, her life was forfeit anyway. She knew what Peter would have done. He would have laughed in Hook's face, fearless and mocking, and challenged him – and defeated him, too - his cry of triumph echoing across the seas, over the rocks and into the very heart of the jungle, so all Neverland would know of it. Well, she would prove herself worthy of his memory and the love she once felt for him.

Her decision made, she suddenly felt careless and free, all fear falling from her. The same heady courage that had filled her that morning on the deck possessed her now. Her clear, strongly-molded features hardened. With a steadiness in her gaze, she raised her eyes to the captain, who was regarding her with an indolent amusement. The candlelight was dancing in his eyes. He lounged back with ease in the high-backed chair, long dark curls spilling over his shoulders. The fashionable libertine of high society once more, embellished with all the gaudy and rakish trappings of piracy. But Wendy was not fooled. She had glimpsed the ghost beneath the careless exterior.

She caught sight of the harpsichord across the room. Inspiration struck her. She would defeat him yet.

"You play very well," she said. "I remember from when I was last here."

She was aware of his gaze, curious and amused, not quite knowing what to make of her. But his mouth curved at the compliment and she felt a tiny flare of triumph within her chest. Let him think her a dull, stupid girl, dazzled by pretty things. This was going to be easy; this was just another tedious dinner party where she must lavish flattery and feign interest in mundane affairs, all the while concealing what she was really thinking (_or __intending) -_

She smiled at him charmingly, her body leaning forward across the table. The finely-ribboned silks gathered at her chest dipped slightly. The candlelight glowed soft over her skin, casting a sheen on the dull gold of her hair. "Do you compose your own music?"

"I never knew you had such an… interest."

Wendy remembered the prudery with which she had scorned the girls at the Finishing School who made eyes at the boys and flirted provocatively, and now here she was, flashing glances on the captain with wide blue eyes, softening her well-mannered inflexions and the disapproving edges of her mouth, thinking, _this is ridiculous, surely he will not be such a fool as to believe in this ludicrous pantomime for a single moment, _but he was smiling across from her, his blue eyes no longer cold, but languid and drowsy while his glass remained half-raised, untouched as he seemed to have completely forgotten about it because his gaze never left hers for a single moment. Wendy was aware of a distinctly feminine touch of pride that she could make him forget himself so entirely, and immediately despised herself for the weakness. She lifted her glass, a graceful curve of a girlish wrist, and took another drink to give herself courage.

_One day, _she thought, _I will tell my grandchildren of the night I charmed a ruthless pirate so I could escape his ship – _

She rose from her chair in a rustle and flurry of crinoline, careful to make her movements slow and unhurried. She needed all her strength and concentration, must do nothing to arouse his suspicions –

"May I take a look?"

A delighted quirk of the mouth. "But of course."

She kept her steps deliberate and measured. He rose behind her, following with lithe, long-limbed grace. Wendy could hardly suppress her laughter, though it came more from nerves. Never had she felt so certain of her power. She could feel the distinct fall of his booted feet behind her. The immense chandelier hung above them, its pendant drops of dark red cut glass glimmering with a dull fire.

Wendy ran a hand over the smoothly polished rosewood, the neatly aligned keys. She loved classical music, though she was unable to produce a single note, completely ignorant of how to play. After discovering from an early age that she could not carry a tune, her parents had never pushed her into a musical education, much to the chagrin of her aunt.

"It's a beautiful instrument," she said. "I never learned how to play."

Fingers slid – cool, teasing – lingering like a shadow. Wendy froze in place at the light touch gliding across her wrist and over her fingers until his slender hand lay on hers. She could feel his presence behind her, so magnetic the very air seemed thick with it. He leaned over, his breath cool on her bare skin, where her throat curved into her shoulder. Hands tightened, lips taut. Pulses of sensation sparking across her flesh. She made an effort not to recoil, though his touch killed. She could hear the dark smile in his voice.

"Allow me."

Fingers pressed downwards, playing a thin, lingering note on the harpsichord. Her heart still thudding, Wendy stepped aside, white-faced and determined. Allowed him to slide past her and move towards the instrument, which was exactly what she had intended. With the wall at her back, her hand reached out behind her, grasping at one of the suspended cutlasses, and in a moment held the blade, poised and quivering, at Hook's exposed throat.

* * *

The captain did not move, but his eyes flared at the challenge.

"Let me go," Wendy told him, willing her voice not to tremble. "And I will allow you your life."

He smiled without humour. "How _magnanimous."_

She realised at once the weapon was far too heavy for her; her fists were trembling as she held it with both hands. If she could only make her escape, lock him in the cabin, it could buy her some time… While her mind floundered, confused, she saw he had recovered his equanimity. The old, easy arrogance slid back into place. His eyes glinted, daring her to dance… daring her into madness… She saw he was smiling; a mocking, hateful look of satisfaction, and it was this, more than anything that hardened her resolve. He did not think she would do it. But she had come too far now. He left her no choice. She swung it with all her strength.

His arm flew up to catch the blow. _Clang. _Metal clashed against the silver hook. The ringing reverberated in shockwaves up her arm.

Before she could swing again, there was a blurring movement of the claret coat. He pulled another blade from the wall. Wendy's eyes widened in fear. Grinning darkly, he advanced on her. She stumbled back a couple of unsteady steps until her legs hit the side of the harpsichord.

She cried out in shock as his blade darted forward, slashing at the sleeves of her dress, tearing the thin material that parted like water under the sharp edge. A long arm thrown out around her waist, dragging her to him roughly, but she dropped to the floor breathlessly and rolled away, the cutlass in her hand slippery against her sweating palms. His blade thudded into the wooden floorboards beside her head and she crawled away in a tangle of torn skirts that clung to her legs. The captain wrenched the blade free and followed, the cutlass moving in a blurring flash of silver, humming in the still air.

She stumbled, her long skirts an impossible hindrance, while he danced around her, black hair flying wildly, laughing at her clumsily unsuccessful attempts to disarm him. Wendy lunged forward again, but her arcing swing was too wide and barely grazed the edges of his long jacket. With a careless shrug of his shoulders, he let the heavy garment fall to the floor and moved in towards her. A gold disc pendant swung across his chest that was just barely exposed by the billowing, high-waisted shirt. The flash of its reflection blinded her momentarily, and it was luck, not skill, that caught his parrying blow. She tried to hold her blade up against his, the tendons in her arms straining at the effort, but she was only a girl, softened with fine living, no match for the strength wielded so effortlessly in his hard, muscular frame.

The unpractised muscles in her arms were burning and the gilded handle was slick against her damp fingers. Her legs were trembling with fear and adrenaline. She was gasping for air, blinking away the perspiration that slid from her forehead into her eyes. This was a battle she could not win, and she felt her arms giving under the inevitable pressure. Hook smiled with gloating triumph as he slowly forced her blade downwards.

So when the cutlass inevitably clattered to the floor, Wendy followed it, dropping to her knees and crawling away. His laughter rang in her ears, booted feet drawing closer, but she did not care because she had reached the table and, pulling herself upright, lunged for the wine decanter and flung it with all her strength at his face. The captain ducked just in time, the red liquid splashing on the wall behind him, streaming downwards like slick paths of blood. The decanter shattered, a thousand raining diamonds scattering in crystalline fragments across the floor. He hissed, eyes darkening.

In those rushed, hasty seconds, her hand reached backwards, fingers closing around the handle of a silver dinner knife, but the movement was slow and fumbling, and he was upon her at once. She fell against the table painfully, glasses and plates crashing to the floor in a cacophony of ringing noise. Breathing hard with the weight of his body upon her, the edge of the table cutting into the curve of her lower spine, nothing in her vision but those narrowed, ice-blue eyes, his face hard with intent –

She made one last effort, her free hand grasping the chair beside her; she drove it forward into his knees, hard enough to make him stumble back. The moment was enough for Wendy to drag herself away, sick with panic and horror, and make one last effort to escape the cabin, before, before…

One hand behind her as she moved backwards, feeling for the door, while the other held the thin knife before her with trembling resolution, bracing herself for the next attack she knew would inevitably come. Sure enough, Hook rose, smooth and fluid, and in a couple of long-limbed strides, he struck. The blade darted forward, quick as lightning, and with a practiced flick of the wrist, he had knocked the knife easily from her shaking hand. It fell to the wooden floor with a loud clatter, and in a few rapid steps he had her backed up, breathless and panting against the door. The blade of his cutlass poised at her chest, pressing a sharp indentation into the flimsy barrier of silk. Never once did his face lose that elegant mask of perfect serenity. Blue eyes dark as ink. Unreadable.

"Foolish, my dear girl. Very foolish." Those cultured tones smooth as quicksilver. "And we had been having such a pleasant evening."

The wood was hard and unyielding at her back. She was breathing hard and furiously, perspiration beading her brow, loosened hair clinging to her face in damp strands. Wendy could see her terrified face reflected in his eyes, clear as water. Then, slowly, the sharp blade was removed from her heart's point. She took advantage of the momentary release, breathing in great gasps of air, the sweat on her forehead cooling to ice. He laid aside the cutlass, but her relief was short-lived as he moved closer, all dark leather and brocade-clad grace. A hand on the curve of her waist, chilling through the thin layer of silk. Sliding. Slowly. Warm skin began to burn.

"Curious…" Hook murmured. "You really would have made a good pirate, my dear. Whoever would have thought you capable of such deception?"

His presence surrounded her. The heady scents of tobacco smoke and wine. Hips and thighs pressing against her through the lavish trappings of elaborate finery, one hand holding her to the door. A cage. Silver. Beautiful. Deadly. She was shaking with fear.

"Now what to do with you?"

* * *

Long, agonizing seconds passed in which the captain merely considered her through the dark line of his lashes. Hair falling around his face like black ink.

Then slowly, the hook at her throat, he lifted her chin, raising her face to his. The metal burned cold against her jaw. The candlelight rippled along its sharp edge.

Her heart was pounding in her throat. That cold, cold silver a kiss of ice on her skin. Pressing against her pulse. It throbbed. One movement, and she would be dead.

Her heart thudded.

"If you are going to kill me," she said faintly, and her voice seemed to come from very far away, "At least have the courtesy of doing it quickly."

"Kill you?" Hook responded, delicately carved lips still smiling that treacherous smile. "Oh _no, _my Darling girl_. _I'm not going to _kill _you."

That sharp, silver finger curled around a loose coil of hair, tugging it on just the right side of pain. She inhaled sharply. He looked briefly satisfied.

"But what then, I wonder?" he mused aloud to himself.

The curved blade laced through her hair in a gesture of deadly tenderness, toying with the lustrous fall of light brown curls. She could not breathe. Her hands slid uselessly against the door, grasping at nothing. The slow glide of knuckles along her cheekbone in a lethal caress stilled her futile motions. She stared at him with panic-widened eyes, unable to move.

Blinded by ice blue. Marble fingers traced a line (_so cold_) from jaw to collarbone. Mindlessly dragging her down with that chilling touch. Again she tried to inch away –

In a flash he had gripped her wrist, trapping it against the doorframe above her head. A dull throb of pain coursed through her arm. Cool fingers languidly entwined with her own. Her mouth fell open, shock freezing her against him. She had expected him to cut her throat, not – not –

His piercing gaze had fallen on her parted lips. The kiss at the corner of her mouth suddenly flared into life, sweet and burning. Aching. And Wendy realised then that death wasn't the worst thing the captain could offer her. Paralyzed against the door, she could only wait in agonized suspense.

Someone was breathing harshly. The blood beat hotly in her veins. She wanted him dead. She wanted him gone. She wanted –

She _wanted._

The press of curved silver against her cheek. Sharp. Blood pulsing under the skin. And beneath that, dizzying ecstasy, a kind of sickening thrill.

The whisper of breath against her mouth, cool and metallic.

"_Wendy."_

Cold fingers on her hands. Cold fingers on her heart. Imprisoned in a blue abyss of frozen diamond. Deadly, sweet paralysis. All her breath, strength, resistance died. She sighed, her body sinking into that silver embrace, and Hook smiled as his head moved towards hers.

* * *

There was groan, a great juddering crash that rocked the cabin from stern to fore. Wendy's head flew back, cracking against the door sharply. Dull pain coursed down her spine. She blinked back stinging tears, weak and disorientated.

"What was that?" the captain demanded harshly.

Wendy didn't answer. She realised she was breathing hard and trembling all over. Her legs shook under her. The aftermath of sensation shivering through her body. Ice… metal… his lips closing in on hers…

The rapid knocking on the door made her jump. She winced as the thudding reverberated through her pounding head.

"Damnation," Hook hissed under his breath. Shoving Wendy gracelessly aside, he wrenched the door open. "Smee! What the blazes is happening out there?"

"Nothin' to worry about, Cap'n, merely run aground on Skull Rock. There are whispers of _mermaids… _far beyond their usual hideout. Word is they're under the orders of _Pan. _'Tis best to lay low, especially with a prisoner on board…"

"Thundering hells!" The captain's hook scored a deep line down the length of the wooden door in a fit of ill temper. Wendy watched the display without flinching. This bluster and show was for the benefit of Smee and did not scare her; it was when he was quiet and softly spoken that she knew him to be deadly. When his fingers locked around her like silver manacles, when the chill kiss of metal pressed against her throat, when her name was a venomous caress on his cruel lips –

She shivered again, ripples of heat and cold running through her.

The bo'sun looked curiously from Wendy's white face and blazing eyes to the dark-blooded complexion of the captain. Whatever he saw, he wisely refrained from making any comment. Instead, his gaze went over the cluttered cabin, the wine-splashed wall, the cutlasses on the floor.

"Dinner over then?"

"It is now," gritted Hook.

"I'll take you back to your cabin then, shall I?" Smee asked Wendy kindly.

She nodded, relieved, and followed the bo'sun from the cabin with somewhat less dignity than she had entered it. Her head spun, her pulse beating thickly. She needed to lie down. She needed to think alone in the solitude of her cabin, away from –

She blinked back a haze of darkness and looked over her shoulder at the captain. He was leaning against the door, watching her with long-cut blue eyes and toying idly with the lace at his wrists.


	4. Day 2: Part 1

**FORGET-ME-NOT**

_He walks in the room  
Air reaches me  
Skin becomes sheets covering me  
Fog carves a crack  
Cuts open wounds  
Veins made of steel feed all this cold_

_Your words are heavy_  
_But they lack so much substance_  
_To fall is the cure for vertigo_

('Sheets', Promise and the Monster)_  
_

* * *

**- Day 2 –**

**Part I**

That interminable thudding woke her again. The weak, grey light of morning crept beneath Wendy's half-closed lids as she reluctantly dragged herself from the depths of oblivion. To her surprise, she had slept long and deep, far deeper than she could have imagined, given the events of last night. Whether from exhaustion or excitement, she had thrown herself onto the hammock and fallen into a death-like slumber. Waking for her was always like pulling herself from the grave (_or the bottom of the ocean –_)

Her mood on stirring was somber and sullen; there was none of the previous morning's thirst for adventure. Instead, she set about the task of rousing herself with a methodical sense of routine. There was to be no romanticism or flights of fancy. Whatever lingering illusions she might have harbored of this being a thrilling adventure or idealistic fairytale were gone. Instead, she was grimly occupied with the impending duty that she had assigned herself. Last night, she had fallen asleep with the calm and decided resolution of searching the captain's quarters. The return of day had brought back reason and will-power. One day had already been wasted, and her foolishness of the preceding night still haunted her. There was no doubt she had acted recklessly; if Hook had run his cutlass through her for the shocking lapse of judgment, Wendy would hardly have blamed him. Attacking him (_attempting to attack him_, her mind whispered derisively) had been a serious error and the last time she would attempt to emulate Peter or her brothers. Physical force was impossible. No, she must use her mind to outwit the captain, set her cunning against his. And the night's sleep had done its work, acting as a restorative on her overwrought mind. The new day brought its own possibilities and she felt resolved and heartened, ready for another battle.

She stared at the dress hanging on her door – the dress that two nights ago had been a beautiful garment of smooth watered silk and ruffled lace of delicate pearl-white. Symbolic white, pure white. White that showed every mark and imperfection, as delicate and fragile as the virtue it represented. Aunt Millicent would have fainted at the state of it now, and Wendy herself was vain enough to mourn the ruin of such a beautiful gown. Smudges of dirt stained the gauzy skirts that were creased despite her best efforts to preserve its natural shape. The sleeves were rendered to tattered shreds thanks to Hook's cutlass, and _that _memory was enough to make her shudder at the prospect of wearing it again or having the material anywhere near her skin. She didn't want to _touch _it again. She could still smell the lingering aroma of cigar smoke, rich and potent, from where he had drawn so close, and –

With a haughty toss of her head, Wendy buried the recollection, refusing to think of it. Instead, she threw open the cabinet opposite her hammock and tried her luck there. Her lips tightened with feminine distaste at the garments spread before her. Faded and worn, a motley collection of breeches and shirts stiffened with lack of wear, made for figures far larger than her own. She was no waif, yet the high waistband of her trousers had to be folded down several times to stay in place. The loose shirt hung almost to her knees so she tucked it into the high waistband of her breeches. She could find no fitting shoes, so remained barefoot. Her heavy mass of hair was pulled back with a thin strip of black ribbon, a few errant tresses falling over her shoulders. Despite how ridiculous she looked, she moved with an unconscious easy grace, aware of a certain freedom in being unconstrained by crinoline and petticoats, her neck and collarbones liberated from the suffocating confines of the school's starched collars and the modest coverings of gauzy lace. Today she was merely a cabin boy, not a young woman.

Then, as she turned away, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and the illusion shattered. She merely looked like Wendy Darling, wearing ridiculous clothes far too big for her, a grown woman playing at dress-up. She thought herself too much of an adult to realize that flashes of her childhood still lingered in her features, especially in her upturned mouth, which at the moment wore a look of sullen dissatisfaction. Anyone would know at a glance that she was city-bred, despite the nautical clothes she was masquerading in. Her father would have been appalled, her mother quietly disappointed at the picture she made, so incongruous to the future they had planned out for her –

No. Better not to think about that now. It was easier to remain in the present.

There were still some resources left to her. The fairy dust remained safe and was still her best hope in freeing her from this ship. The captain's cabin might yet reveal some secrets and the crew had proven themselves to be more amicable than she had anticipated and could be persuaded to talk, if necessary.

Then there was the captain. He stole insidiously, like a soft forbidden whisper, into her thoughts and she did not want him there. There was menace in his eyes and danger in his mouth, exulting conquest lurking in that cruel smile that had paralyzed her last night. The recollection turned Wendy cold all over and she froze in place before the mirror, her fingers tracing agitated patterns against the glass.

What had happened in that cabin?

The memory lingered like a raw wound. The phantom sensation of cool fingers on her skin would not leave her alone. The terror of the emotions the encounter had evoked in her was frightening, but what was more frightening was that not all the emotions were terrible. She could not recall a time in her life when her body and impulses had been so utterly beyond her control. Every instinct had warned her to flee, but she had remained motionless, locked in place by the touch of metallic flesh and curving fingers. Silver and smiles. Those cool, unhurried tones caressing and cruel in equal measure. _Wendy. _Never once losing that gentlemanly veneer of formality. And his eyes. Always so cold, crystalline. Like a pool of still water concealed in a dark cave. A hidden part of her wanted to know what would have happened if she had _shattered _that stillness –

He had crossed a line yesterday evening, and what was worse, she had allowed him to. That scared her. His crew was coarse and rough and uncouth, yet not one of them had made even so much as a leering remark or looked at her in any way that could be construed as offensive. They had treated her with deference and… respect. While their captain – polite, elegant and cultured – had acted like a villainous rake. His utter lack of gentlemanly conduct was appalling, his complete disregard for limits unnerving.

And she had not stopped him.

She realized how frighteningly easy it would be to lose herself entirely, to be drawn in by that deadly charm and captivating grace. There was an unsettling fascination in his effrontery, the lazy air of possession and familiarity, so different to the fumbling manners of the boys who had approached her before, even poor Charles Quiller-Couch with his kind eyes and earnest face, who had stammered an apology after kissing her on a stupid impulse. None of them had even come close. No one ever had – except Peter. And he was as different to Hook as day from night. The one filled her with joy and the other with dread. Peter was merry and daring and wild. Hook was enraged and vicious and ruthless. The very _memory _of his touch turned her blood to ice, racked her body with convulsive shivers. Try as she might, she could not forget the searing contrast of the claret-scented warmth of his body against the piercing metallic _cold _seeping through her skin. Ice outside and fire within.

She would plunge into the depths of the sea, she would dash herself to pieces on the rocks, she would walk straight into the jaws of a leviathan… she would do anything so she might erase all traces of Captain James Hook from her flesh.

But she had not stopped him.

If he could only see what a fragile, weak thing he had made her, how he would triumph. He paralyzed her mind and haunted her thoughts, was an ever-present menace in her soul. This was different to the heart-fluttering, breathless excitement that the thought of Peter had always invoked. No, it was fear that made her blood beat hot and her pulse pound fast. For all her bold words last night, she truly was afraid of him.

But in spite of that, she still possessed the resilient, willful, careless quality of youth that had the enviable ability to forget troubles. And she could never resist a challenge. There was no use in forestalling what she had resolved to do.

Wendy opened her door and stole cautiously down the corridor. Almost in a dream, she approached the gilded door, wondering what madness was impelling her back here. Raising a frighteningly steady hand, she knocked, once.

No answer. Silence reigned on the other side of the door.

In that moment, Wendy was almost tempted to turn back and seek refuge in her cabin, but she scornfully overrode the weakness. If she wanted to escape, she must find the means herself. There was no Peter at the window, no childish hand held out offering to take her away from her troubles. With a burst of defiance and despair, she pushed open the door and entered Hook's cabin.

* * *

The aroma of spiced cigar smoke lingered heavy in the air, immediately revisiting vivid memories upon her senses, invoking thoughts and sensations she would rather have forgotten. The long dining table stood unadorned, light raying across the polished wood. Dark mahogany and inlaid gold. Mist clouded the porthole window. The cabin still maintained that indefinable atmosphere of subtle ardor and forgotten secrets though now the air was languid and dulled where last night it had been potent and alive. Smoke curled in shadowy corners. Forgotten dreams surrounded her like curling wisps of perfume, slow and drugging. Deceptive warmth and soft, pulsing light, drawing her mind irresistibly back to the night before. Flames dancing, teasing the candle wicks. As the wine swirled in the decanter and the lights burned low…

There was a sort of artistic disorder to the sprawling decadence of the furnished cabin. Draperies of silk hung over mahogany-backed chairs, gold coins spilled from full chests. Slanting beams of light rayed across the wooden floor, distorted in the captured prisms of the chandelier and glass-cased clocks. Clocks with frozen hands that did not make a sound. Gilt-bound books were stacked from table to ceiling. The pervasive quiet seemed a mockery, heightening the beat of her own heart in her ears. She saw another door opposite which could only lead to the captain's sleeping quarters…

A floorboard creaked underfoot. Wendy stilled, hearing the rapid thudding of her heart. Never taking her eyes from the closed door, she made her way slowly across the cabin. The thought of him asleep on the other side made her pulse race. If she was discovered, what would happen? What would he do to her?

Almost unconsciously, her fingers drifted to her cheek, her jaw, following the ghostly line his hook had traced the night before. That sharp, metallic trail so cold against her skin. It was like he had given her a part of himself. And it would remain with her always.

She explored further, feeling she was entering a Cave of Wonders, moving further and deeper into the luxurious quarters that were so utterly at variance to everything she had seen so far on this ship. A true pirate's hoard met her wondering gaze. Bric-a-brac, wealth and trinkets. Flotsam and jetsam pulled from the tides. Pearls drawn from the depths of the ocean, gemstones garnered from raids beyond count. Wendy was not entirely immune from materialistic weakness; the sight of them captured her fascination, and she stared like one entranced. Many people would sell their souls for such wealth.

But she had a purpose here; and she knew that despite his predilection for fine culture and lavish treasures, the captain possessed a sharp and cunning mind. There had to be some kind of material evidence for his carefully-plotted stratagems. With that thought in mind, and ever-conscious that she might be disturbed at any moment, Wendy turned immediately to the nearest cabinet and tried the first three drawers. Locked. She sighed in frustration. With no clear sense of what she was looking for, and an icy tightness in her heart at the fear of discovery, she was on the brink of abandoning her resolution, but refused to admit defeat so soon.

She tried another chest of drawers – one that opened, but revealed to her disappointed gaze nothing but a collection of minerals and gemstones, all labeled in the same slanting, elegant hand. She turned then to another bureau, trying the drawers again with patient succession, scanning the shelves above. Nothing. A drawer that she suspected held papers from the faint rustling shift she heard within when trying to open it, proved unassailable. She was agonizingly conscious of the minutes passing every time her gaze fell on the still and soundless clocks, the inlaid, glassy faces taunting her with reflections that startled her into thinking the captain had silently returned and discovered her. She could almost feel him watching her. Haunting her as he haunted the dark recesses of her mind, an insidious presence that breathed into every thought she had ever suppressed and every dream she had never dared utter.

The intense silence, the decadent scents of cigar smoke and warm claret were more than her tightly-strained nerves could stand. Wendy looked toward the dining table where last night he had pinned her with the force of his body, and turned away from it, shuddering. She would break down if she thought of it, and think of it she would, if she remained here. She would not stay in this cabin a moment longer.

The whole thing was futile, and she was driving herself mad with fevered imaginings. _Another chance tried, _she thought hopelessly. _And another chance lost. _She began to make her way towards the door, when her glance fell once again on the dining table and she paused. The table-drawer, the one place she had not yet looked. Quietly, Wendy pulled it open and looked in eagerly. She pulled out a rolled-up parchment with a sense of growing excitement. It was a map of Neverland, the lines of latitude and longitude chartered along its length, elaborate notes filled in the blank spaces, nautical observations on the weather, wind direction, well-traced courses and trajectories. It seemed the captain was an amateur cartographer among his other interests.

Wendy spread open the map with shaking fingers, eyes rapidly scanning the depiction of the island. Her heart ached at the sight of all those places so dearly familiar to her. To the south lay Marooner's Rock and the Mermaid's Lagoon, where her first great adventure had taken place, and where she had had her first, terrifying glimpse of Hook. The ambush still so vivid in her memory, that crawled into her dreams. The dark-blue clothed pirate, his rifle upraised, lithe and fluid and hunting, hunting. Piercing blue eyes a snare, a trance. Fear gathered tight knots in her throat, impressing on her the utmost urgency of escape.

She knew the Jolly Roger often docked east of the island – far closer to the Lost Boys than the captain had ever realized – but last night Smee had said they were aground on Skull Rock, far further north than she ever remembered Hook being. Given the adverse weather conditions, she doubted they would have moved far from that location. But where were they headed? What and whom was the captain planning to attack?

The paper was worn and creased in places and the top left corner was torn. She had a sudden memory of lingering outside the captain's quarters, hearing his hook thudding into the parchment. Wendy peered closer at the hole in the paper and could discern long-faded, embellished writing that was just barely decipherable. _The Indian village._

And so that was whom Hook intended to strike. The Piccaninny tribe and their princess. She recalled Tiger Lily, savage and haughty and imperious with her darkly flashing eyes, a wigwam warrior stained with ageless suns and endless slaughter. The Battle of Slightly Gulch was a distant memory but that hardly mattered; all she knew was that these people had once been allies, and so they were enemies of Hook.

The rapid jump of her heart and the faint stirrings of exhilaration betrayed the resolution already forming in her mind. If she could escape, and somehow warn them and _help _them, not only for their own sake, but it was a chance of reaching Peter, and – in truth this spurred her on most of all – the opportunity to score a victory against the captain. She had two weapons at her disposal now. If the attack were to happen tonight, all she needed to do was wait until nightfall and steal onto the deck unnoticed – hopefully while the crew was distracted – and use the fairy dust. Then she would finally be free of this place – of _him – _

She looked again at the map. The river ran to the south of the Indian village, opening out to the sea in a chain of narrow and rocky outlets. It would be a perilous channel to navigate a ship through, but the trees on the north bank would render any approach almost invisible. Dangerous, but the captain was bold enough and mad enough to dare such an endeavor.

But of course, this was simply mere speculation when in fact she was nothing more than a girl with a vivid imagination who had no experience of battle or strategizing and whose talents did not extend much further than holding a polite conversation. Wendy laid the map down with a sigh, the tips of her fingers easing the tense lines of her brow. What was she _doing? _Did she really think she had a chance of defeating _Captain Hook?_

With a sigh, she rolled up the map, and was placing it carefully back in the drawer when her fingers brushed against something hard and cold. Her trembling hand drew out a pistol, its polished, metallic edge gleaming in the slanting rays of light. Wendy's heartbeat quickened as she stared at it consideringly. Then, coming to a silent decision, she slid the pistol into the waistband of her trousers, letting her shirt fall loose to her thighs to conceal it. The metal lay caressingly cool against her thigh.

She had everything she needed. Another glance around the cabin to confirm she had left no traces of her presence. She closed the door with painstaking care. Her first priority was to conceal the pistol somewhere out of sight in her cabin; she did not dare wonder what might happen if it was discovered on her person. Better that she leave it in the sanctuary of her room. Yesterday, her cabin had remained untouched; she had not.

Casting a nervous glance over her shoulder, Wendy began to walk rapidly down the corridor and turned the corner –

Straight into the waiting form of the captain.

* * *

One leather-clad leg was crossed over the other, a wooden beam supporting the reclining curve of his back. She had not prepared herself for an encounter, and the shock of seeing him so unexpectedly sent her heart slamming into her ribcage, the blood rushing hot colour into her cheeks. The last time she had seen him seared across her mind. Caressing metal. Sharp pain. Sweet ecstasy. Cool breath on her lips as his mouth moved towards hers… With an exertion of will, Wendy forced down the recollection. The pistol was cold and reassuring at her waist but it never occurred to her for a moment to use it.

"Retiring so soon?" He was watching her beneath narrowed lids, the cunning gleam of his eyes startlingly blue in the dim light.

Wendy stood her ground, hoping her expression did not betray her. "I was just taking the air."

"And was it to your liking?"

She nodded, watching him carefully.

Hook's smile was colder than a knife's edge. "There's a rainstorm and a devil's gale blowing outside and your clothes are not soaked in the slightest. Care to try again?"

There was nothing she could say. Even in the dim light, she could see that beads of water still clung in a mist to his black curls, running in silver trails down the velvet of his collar, and like a fool she had been too preoccupied to notice before. She looked at him and did not reply. Her heart beating, beating.

"So," he said, his tones light and melodious which she knew already meant he was deadly, "You refuse to talk. What a pity."

She sought to remain calm and indifferent, concealing the fact that every nerve in her body was tense and thrumming, _alive. _"Only because there is nothing to tell."

Quicker than thought, he was standing over her, rigid-shouldered and steel-strong. Wrapping her in silver chains, both burning and freezing. His face was hard and intent, and Wendy realized with a flash of fear that he had not forgiven her for the previous night. And he would not forget.

"I do hope," he murmured, "That you are not going to become more trouble than you're worth."

_I'll give you trouble,_ Wendy thought, stubbornly determined not to yield. _I'll give you all the trouble that Peter did and more besides -_

"We came to an agreement, remember," he breathed against the hollow of her throat. The lacing cold of an arctic wind, stripping away her defenses, leaving her soul exposed and shivering. And yet, her skin was burning. "Three days in which I do nothing to you, so long as you return the favour. But if you wish to test the limits of my patience, you will see just how merciless I can be." He raised his hook to her upturned face, pressing an icy indenture to the skin (as he had last night, right _before_…) "Or had you forgotten?"

"No," she echoed. "I hadn't forgotten."

He inclined his head in a sardonic imitation of a bow, stretched out his ringed hand with a sweeping gesture of exaggerated mockery. "Then don't let me keep you."

This time he would get no rise out of her. With a show of cold disregard, Wendy turned to the door of her cabin.

"And you are right," he said quietly, stilling her. "For what you attempted to do to me last night – you aren't absolved_._"

Her hand had closed around the handle when his soft voice spoke again, sending ice prickling along the back of her neck.

"_And I'll never let it go_._"_

* * *

The captain had been right about the weather. The drear atmosphere echoed her mood. Fog hung in low swathes about the ship and a cold drizzle had set in, casting a filmy grey veil over everything. A raw wind billowed through the sails, making Wendy shiver where she crouched at the base of the mast, chin cradled pensively in her hands as she tried to summon the self-will to chance the next move in this perilous game she was playing. The dense fog clung to her skin, the misty rain soaking through her shirt and chilling her to the bone. Her hair was plastered against her face in soaked, straggling waves, dulled to the color of curled ash bark. She remembered the candlelit warmth of the captain's cabin and shook away the recollection with contempt at herself. She would have sold her soul for a hot bath if it meant she wouldn't have to dwell on those unsettling, pervasive memories.

A grim sense of purpose hung heavy in the air. The men worked silently and with bent backs, full of a rigid tenacity, unwilling to meet her eyes when yesterday they had been all easy frivolity and stumbling gallantry. She wondered if Hook had reprimanded them for indulging her the previous night and felt almost guilty. For however much she convinced herself she disliked the captain, there was no reason for the crew to be punished for her small insurrection.

From her huddled position on the stern of the ship, she could see the outline of him emerge through the clinging mist: cloak and hair and sloping shoulders. The narrow mouth and angular eyes upturned to the rain as he cursed quietly. Wendy shrank back out of sight, dreading another encounter. She could not see him again, did not know herself around him. Her usual calm control fled and she became anxious, uncertain as a child, and inwardly raged over this weakness inside her that she did not understand. Yet against her will, she remained frozen in place, unable to pull herself away.

It was a moment before she caught his words carried on the knifing breeze. "… Become a nuisance ever since they allied themselves with Pan."

"But Captain, the weather… they say there's going to be a fierce storm when we plan to –"

"_I don't care about the weather!"_ roared the captain. "I want them dealt with – without mercy. I've not endured these last seven years being tormented by an ocean of dead faces only to be challenged by a band of savage fools – by thunder! I'll see the world damned to bring down Pan, if that's what it takes." Even from a distance, she saw the furious glint in his eyes, alive with old ghosts. "I want no more of your blithering incompetence."

Wendy did not wait to hear any more. She had not forgotten his haunting tale of the night before. Illuminated by the unhallowed lights, he had looked pale as a corpse, his eyes as wide and wild as one who had just crawled from the depths of a watery grave. Was it truly a drowned wraith she had to contend with? Wendy shivered, unable to forget the hollow, hunted look in his pale eyes. Eyes that had seen sights no man should witness. What could be so awful, so terrible that it had filled Captain James Hook with horror? His words came back to her, an invocation of one long gone. _Where dead men dwell with the things that move in deep. _What _was _he? Was he a man? And if so, was he living or dead?

She had seen from his face, rigid with beautiful cruelty, that he would never stop, never give up.

But then, neither would she.

Smee was too close to the captain to attempt to cross-examine without discovery. Gentleman Starkey still had too much of the public school obedience clinging to him to ever contemplate any form of disobedience. But Cecco – large, attractive and sure of himself – could possibly be cajoled into revealing some of the crew's plans. She easily discerned his broad form through the silvery veils of low cloud. His was the most handsome face of the crew's and the only one not worn down with the cowed submission all the other pirates displayed. Wendy approached him with the decided mobile grace that came so naturally to her, the effortless conceit of true breeding. She pulled the threaded ribbon from her hair, conscious of how the damp waves fell over her shoulders and down her back. The cold had brought a flush of color to her cheeks and brightened her eyes. _Were I dressed in my finest gown, _she thought defiantly, _with pearls around my throat, there is not one of these wretches who wouldn't defy the captain to help me – _

"A dangerous day to be risking the high seas," she observed aloud.

The dark man laughed without casting so much as a glance on her. "What would you know of it?"

"You are quite right," she agreed evenly. "I talk as if I were a seasoned sea-farer instead of a young lady of family and position. Ridiculous! We know better than that, don't we?"

"The captain says we're not to speak to you. Tradition tells you'll bring misfortune on the ship and all its crew." But the sudden glow in his coal eyes and the wolfish flash of teeth gave her hope.

"Do you always do as the captain says?" she asked innocently.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "When it suits me."

"Does it suit you now?" She felt a momentary quiver of contempt at herself that she overrode.

Cecco leaned heavily against the drenched wood, watching her sharply beneath his thick black brows. "What is it you want?"

Wendy looked at him appraisingly. "Supposing you tell me our destination and I'll tell _you _a story."

He laughed aloud. "A story, is it? A long time since one of those has been heard aboard this ship. All right, bellissima – I'll hear your story, and _then _I might be inclined to start singing."

Wendy was not conceited enough to think his easy compliance was due to any of her own merits. He was bored, she realized, and perhaps idly amused by her. Well, so much the better for her. Without a moment of hesitation or self-consciousness, she threw herself headlong into the first narrative that came to her mind.

And suddenly, it all fell away. Her fears, her worries, her anxieties. She had delved into the world she loved, bringing it to life, losing herself in the imagination, the intrigue, the magnificent richness of it. This was wonderful, this was what she was _meant _for. The passion brought a flush to her cheeks, an imaginative fire flared in her calm eyes.

Gradually, she realized she was gathering an audience, as more and more of the crew seemed to be working nearby, some had abandoned all pretense and were seated or standing at intervals, listening intently. The thought that she was expressly defying the captain filled Wendy with a mad, reckless sense of purpose and she worked herself up to greater efforts, painting the canvas of her narrative in rich, vivid strokes. All her innate pride and command rose to the surface, that ability to hold and capture a rapt audience. There was not a trace of the former feminine charm in her recital that might have idly passed away the hours in a drawing room on a rainy afternoon. No longer soft and alluring, an angry resolution filled her. She spoke with a wild defiance, her voice raised and trembling, a fevered glow in her cheeks. Her movements were hard and bold, all sense of delicacy and refinement stripped away. She would have shocked and saddened her former acquaintances or an observer with any semblance of breeding. She absolutely electrified the crew. Gentleman Starkey was listening, slack-jawed. Bill Jukes was nodding with approval. Cecco's dark eyes were smoldering. Wendy barely saw it, aware only of the rapt silence, the beating of her pulse in her ears, and –

And –

The metallic fall of booted steps on the wooden boards. The sound rang out, hollow and endlessly magnified. Another shadowed figure, tall and slender and dark-cloaked, appeared on the edge of the deck.

"What the blazes is happening here?"

* * *

Wendy's heart splintered in terror, dragged back to reality with brutal force. Unconsciously, she withdrew back into the shadows. Cloaked and hooded in black, the captain looked like the Devil himself. The Devil with deep blue eyes. The crew began muttering among themselves.

"Explain the meaning of this or by thunder, I'll run my hook through you –"

"Leave them alone." The smooth, well-bred tones sounded jarringly out of place amidst the rough and unruly company.

Hook turned rapidly, the dark hood of his cloak falling back, the line of his profile startlingly pale against the deep black of his curling hair. Wendy saw for once that she had shocked him. He hid it well – but there was no concealing the momentary flash of surprise that crossed his features.

"What is _she_ doing here?" he demanded in an undertone to Smee. He paused, staring at her. Then a malicious red smile curved his mouth.

Wendy cried out in startled surprise as he caught her arm, dragging her into the centre of the circle. His expression was impossible to discern, his face shadowed by the dark folds of his hood. Only the glint of his eyes; the colour of dark blue-tinted glass.

"Yes? Something you wish to say?"

She could not back down now, though she had turned pale and her nails dug tense crescents into her palms. The impulsive exclamation had burst from her lips in spite of herself, spurred by the subdued terror of the crew and the terrible memories of Hook's pistol silencing any man who spoke out of turn. The thought of watching another murder take place before her eyes made her faint with sickness, and so she lifted her chin, willing her voice to remain steady.

"Your crew is not to blame. It was my fault; I insisted on distracting them while they were busy working. If anyone is to be punished it is me, and that, Captain, is the truth - so run your hook through me, if you will."

"Well?" he demanded, "Have you all lost your tongues? Is the girl right?"

The men began clamouring in eager assent. It was a rather thankless display of gratitude, thought Wendy scornfully, considering her neck might very well be on the line.

"Very well." Hook exhaled with a show of weary contempt, his narrowed eyes surveying the cowed, submissive crew with barely-concealed impatience. "Get back to work. And if any man of you ever disobeys me again I'll fling your worthless hides over the deck and let the crocodiles make a meal of your flesh. And let me tell you –" His face darkened as he pulled back the lace cuff of his sleeve and – Wendy swallowed back a surge of terror and nausea – exposed the pale skin of his forearm, riddled silver-white with scars from the deep indentations of jagged teeth marks, "Those creatures bite deep, and once they have a taste of you, they won't let go. Now get out of my sight."

There was a bustle and clamour as the men could not be gone fast enough. Work resumed, and Wendy found herself alone on the deck, her presence completely forgotten. The fog slid cool blue fingers across the deck, the chill wind wrapping around her shoulders like a blanket of ice. She had started to shiver with cold and was just wondering drearily whether to return to her cabin when the captain appeared at her side.

"They won't thank you for it," he remarked, displaying that flash of uncanny intuition. His eyes were cool and bright, his mouth smiling. The hooped gold glimmered in his ear, its wink seeming like a mockery.

"Perhaps not," Wendy said uneasily, resisting the urge to wrap her arms around herself. Unwilling to show any vulnerability before him. "But they don't deserve to die merely for listening to a story."

"If you knew what those men had done, you might not be so quick to pardon them. Each of them has more deaths to their hand than you have years to your unspoiled young life."

"Deaths at _your _order."

There was an edge to his voice, provoked perhaps by her evident disdain. "They hardly needed much convincing. And nor did you, if I recall, when you held a cutlass to my throat last night." She flinched and looked away. He leaned closer, his desultory tones smooth as steel sliding into her heart. "Killing a man – it's the easiest thing in the world, and never so sweet as the first time –" his voice dropped and his slowly unfurling smile chilled her blood – "I wonder if there was enough conviction in your heart to have truly done it, to have _ended _me. A curious sort of honour it would have been, my blood being the first to stain your innocent hands."

Wendy felt cold and very alone. The mist lay damp, cold fingers on the back of her neck, hauntingly reminiscent of his touch. "It would have been worth it," she managed hoarsely, "To rid Neverland of such a menace."

"Of course. Always so protective. Such a _mother. _Tell me; are you still as devoted as ever to those thankless brats?"

"If you are referring to my brothers, John and Michael are both grown men now."

"Ah," he said, smiling that silver-edged smile. "So motherhood doesn't fill you with the same delight as it once did? The years have turned you cold, dear girl."

Wendy felt suddenly sick at heart. She closed her eyes, willing herself to disregard his cutting words that were designed only to wound. Lies laced with barbs of truth, enough to make her doubt herself. Is this what she was now? So bitter, so disillusioned of life? Like _him? _She thought back to a lonely girl in a cold nursery, on the brink of renouncing her dreams. Resigning herself to a life empty and hollow. _We both of us are trapped, _she realized, disquieted at the revelation. She would almost have pitied him had she not determined to harden her heart against him. And she was still proud enough to scorn him.

"What would you know of it?" she returned wearily. "You have never loved, never cared for anyone."

"Always so quick to depict me the cold and heartless villain, aren't you, my beauty?"

The savagery with which he spoke cut through her like a knife, pulling her startled gaze up to his. In his face was a poignant flicker of emotion that made her heart shudder. The cool, sardonic veneer had been brutally stripped away, and what she saw beneath was desolate, awful. Shaken, Wendy stared at him, suddenly recalling those words spoken in bitterness that she had not dared allowed herself to think on too closely… _I have_ _no happy thoughts… I am bound by the regrets of maturity… a torment…_

What she had glimpsed in those moments – weariness, resentment, and terrible unhappiness – told her more than she wanted, told her things she refused to let herself believe. She knew, had known even in the confused emotional depths of adolescence, that he had dropped willingly into the jaws of the crocodile. He had accepted – no, _embraced_ – the bleak approach of death. She was looking into the face of a man who had given up. Given up on life, hope, happiness, and resigned himself to the dim future with despairing certainty.

She spoke slowly, her quiet words filling the vast space between them. "Then prove me wrong. For once in your life, show mercy. End this petty feud and release me."

Silence. Only the dull, steady rhythm of the rain falling on the deck and low, mournful billowing of the sails in the chill, icy wind. The air veiled them in a grey mist. He was looking down at her, his eyes very blue, curious and absorbed, and an expression of yearning so intense it seemed almost physical pain flickering across his marble-still features. Wendy remained still under his searching gaze that seemed to hold them together, her heart beating strangely. She hardly dared to breathe. The desire to reach out, to touch him, to discover something _real_ beneath the cruelty and cynicism and deception was almost overwhelming, and she could no longer fight the impulse.

"Captain?" she said, wonderingly.

He sighed heavily, a tremor ran through the hand half-lifted to her face. Hesitant and uncertain, as though he did not know what to do next, a voyager on the brink of abandoning a long and half-desired isolation. Slender fingers lightly traced the line of her jaw, the ephemeral touch like the embrace of the tide, comforting and smooth. His mouth opened as though to speak –

And he laughed. Blood suffused his cheeks, the hateful mockery flashing in his eyes.

"Oh, very good," he whispered. "But unfortunately you will not find me so easily swayed." He smiled with vile derision at the expression on her face that she could not suppress before he read the emotion there. "Really, my dear girl, what did you _expect?_"

Wendy took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, holding her head up even though her eyes were sore and stinging. The cold air tried to soothe her burning face. She felt a rush of humiliation and overwhelming _disappointment_. She was a fool to have believed him capable of any form of humanity. How could she have thought, even for a _moment, _that he might –

"You look pale," he observed casually. "You're not sickening, are you?"

"I have never been seasick in my life."

"Good. Because it'll be a wild night tonight and I cannot spare the men to be catering to feminine sensibilities. They will have a hard enough time of it merely keeping us on course."

"That's true," agreed Wendy, the sudden flash of humiliated anger at his careless words provoking her to recklessness, "Though I thought it was because you intended to attack the Piccaninny warriors tonight."

The instant the words passed her lips, she would have given worlds to recall them.

The captain's hand darted out, fingers biting into her wrist (bringing back memories like a whispered death sentence _– kill you? Oh no, my Darling girl, I'm not going to _kill _you –) _and she swallowed down the searing flash of bright pain. Her blood surged, quickening the pulse that throbbed beneath his hold.

"Who told you?" growled Hook. "Out with it – or I'll give you something to sing about when I drag my hook across your throat – "

He was too close. His eyes, too cold. Sapphire and steel. Wendy hid her terror, forcing it down beneath a fragile veneer of detached politeness. "Pirates talk," she said, "And walls are thin."

His grip on her eased a fraction, and suddenly, she found herself facing the cavalier, dissolute libertine once more. He was smiling and smiling, courteous and civilized, yet she could sense his anger beneath, swelling like a storm. "Well, my beauty," he said softly. His tones were caressing as silk but his eyes were ice. "You _have_ been busy, haven't you?"

She shivered at the look he gave her. But there was no use in remaining silent. He knew the worst now, anyway. "So it is true. You mean to attack the Indians."

"You will keep your mouth _shut._" The polished silver gleamed at his wrist like a warning.

She would have to tread carefully. If the captain had one weakness, it was vanity; she might yet be able to play on it as she had done last night. "I just thought… it's only that it sounds so terribly exciting. May I come along?"

"No."

Her fists clenched at her sides. But she concealed her inner vexation, her expression steady and ingenuous. "I only wanted the chance to see a real pirate raid. I have no intention of interrupting you or your men."

"Don't bat your eyelashes at me. Let you on the shore? I wouldn't trust you out there for five minutes."

"But I –"

"Smee," the captain called over his shoulder carelessly. "See to it that she's kept out of my way. Lock her in her cabin."

Wendy immediately took a step back. But he was too fast for her, one arm locking hard around her waist, dragging her back with a force as irresistible as the tide. Holding her rigid against him, pressed tightly into the plush velvet confines of his cloak. Heart in her throat at the fear of him – his coldness, his anger, his _hunger _– she momentarily forgot to remain aloof. His clenched hand was so cold, his blood so _hot, _and she was enmeshed in rippling folds of dark water. Closer than she could stand. Her mind whirled, tried to summon reason, rationality –

Then her old pride reasserted itself. Even if she was his prisoner, she was not an object to be manhandled at his will. She did not know how he treated other women, but she was a respectable lady and would have him remember it.

"I thought you would have considered it the height of bad form to lock up defenseless women," she managed coldly. Her lips pressed into a thin line of displeasure.

He lifted a winged dark brow. "I would hardly call you defenseless."

"No gentleman would ever –"

Hook sneered nastily, a thread of steel in his tone. "Your right to lecture me on courtesy ended when you tried to run me through with my own cutlass. Save the pretensions of virtue, girl. They will do you no good here."

She tried one last appeal. "What am I supposed to do shut away in my cabin?"

He shrugged, waving a slim white hand dismissively. "What do I care?"

"I refuse to be treated like some –" Wendy began to say, and then sternly checked herself. She would not lower herself by making a scene.

The captain's tone was cool when he spoke again. "Kindly do not bother me with any hysterics. I would rather not any trouble."

"You invited trouble the moment you took me aboard this ship. Surely you know such a move would provoke my –"

"_Friends?"_ Hook sneered, his cruel eyes gleaming and narrow. "I'll wager you've not many; your type seldom does. One evening in your company sufficed to convince me of that. In short, my dear girl, you are nothing more than a stiff, spoilt, condescending –"

"Cap'n."

Smee's appearance did not abate the effect of those sharp words that stung like a lash – even more so, given there was enough truth in them to _hurt – _but Wendy rallied, her eyes meeting the captain's steadily and without flinching as she spoke with a certainty she did not feel. "If you really believed that," she said. "You would not be locking me away."

Hook cocked his pistol at her. She heard the metallic _click_. "You can go to your cabin," he continued smoothly. "Or… you can lose your kneecaps. I don't recall mentioning _them _in our little arrangement."

Ice gripped her heart. She felt her body slacken. Something in the captain's hard gaze warned her not to push him any further. His eyes had that glint of familiar steel. Anger as unpredictable as his smiles. She had already challenged him on the deck and instinct told her it would be wise not to provoke him. Not for the time being, anyway. Tightly, she nodded. She felt the bo'sun's hands close around her in a hold that was surprisingly gentle. She could have broken away at any moment, but did not even make the attempt. If the captain could play his own game, then so could she. Let him busy himself with the ship and its crew. When darkness came and they were too busy to remember her, she could break out easily enough. She resolved to run the risk headlong that night. Something of Peter's spirit still lingered within her, hardening her resolve, making her careless of all perils.

"Smee. A moment."

The captain's hand enclosed her wrist like a band of iron. A manacle of ice locking around her skin. A cold shiver raced down her spine, hot blood beating beneath. Eyes narrowed, Hook studied her closely, one of those deep, penetrating gazes that seemed to drag every deeply-buried thought and emotion from the depths of her mind. She could not look away.

"So you've learned sense, after all?" he murmured. A taut smile. Silver wires digging into her flesh. She was spiraling down through cool blue. Eyes into which she could fall and fall forever. That almost made her believe she wanted to. She swayed, on the brink of vertigo.

"No, I think not," he added as an afterthought. His grip on her tightened. "You've a furtive face and a prying mind and you don't scare easily. But understand this, Wendy Darling. You might sneer at me and think you can outwit me, but if you so much as make a move to defy me, it will be the last thing you ever do."

_Then I will die happy, _she thought, trying (and trying and _trying_) to summon that old, sustaining hatred of him. But to her absolute despair, she realized it was slipping away from her like water that couldn't be held –

The captain turned away with a movement of casual disregard, the echo of his retreating steps lingering in her mind long after he had disappeared from her sight. She yielded calmly to the bo'sun's appeals and allowed herself to be led away – not like someone conquered, with shoulders bowed and head bent – but with her shoulders straight, her footfalls confident and sure. There would be time enough to fall prey to hopelessness, but she must do so in solitude.

Smee's voice seemed to reach her through a mist. "How about I cook you something nice to eat?"

"No," she responded dully. "I am quite alright." She wanted to be left alone to think; the bo'sun's well-meaning kindness was touching, but could not help her now.

Smee did not insist, and said nothing more until she was back in her own cabin, the metallic grate of the key turning in the lock behind her. _He does not like me, _Wendy realized, never once thinking that she had given him little reason to do so.

Left alone, her first thought was to check the pistol had remained undiscovered in her absence. She found it where she had hidden it, deep in the confines of her dresser and wrapped in a thick blanket, clearly untouched. And yet… she frowned suddenly. A collection of books had been left on the dresser. On top lay a note in that familiar hand that made her throat tighten. _Such fine literature should not go to waste. _Drawing closer,Wendy glanced at the titles curiously. _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Tempest, The Count of Monte Cristo, _a selection of Petrarch and Baudelaire. The texts were familiar to her; she had spent her adolescence falling into them as a solitary wanderer stumbling across old pathways and the sight of them struck a chord within her… Forcibly wrenching her mind from the past, Wendy sat on the edge of the hammock, turning her thoughts to her current predicament. She could not wait for Peter any longer. Escape was imperative now. Beyond that, she did not dare allow herself to think. She could not. But the heavy, despondent thoughts crept upon her in spite of herself.

Soon she would have to return to the dull regularity of shallow etiquette and the social demands of Edwardian womanhood, that senseless life that was like walking through a waking dream. A bitterness, greater than she could have imagined, filled her. She had tasted adventure again, held freedom within her grasp and she would have to renounce it again. The thought brought with it a dull ache. Adulthood no longer held the same abstract, mysterious, profound quality that had enticed her thirteen year-old self back to London. She knew all too well what was expected of her, the role she must play. Resigned to go through an entirely eventless life, where nothing ever happened.

_Only twenty last birthday, _she thought. _And my whole life is already planned out for me. That night of the party I felt I had lived a hundred years._

"Suppose I _do _return?" she broke out abruptly to the empty cabin. "Who can impel me to marry if I don't wish to? Can't I say no to Charles? Am I not independent enough to know my own mind? My parents are not tyrants – they would not force me to do anything that I did not want to."

_But they would be disappointed, though, _another voice whispered. And how much _worse _that was. To disappoint the parents that had loved and indulged her and given her everything she wished for since childhood. Their sad resignation and quiet reticence entangled her far more tightly in this engagement than any show of force or anger could have.

It unnerved her to realize that she had felt more vividly alive these last twenty-four hours than she could remember feeling in the last seven years. When she was here, everything was unpredictable, uncontrollable, unrestrained. Like the chains of her old life had fallen away from her. She was not ready to renounce that elating sense of freedom and _purpose_ – not yet. She would have one last adventure before returning to the steady, sedate life that awaited her, where she was known only as Miss Darling, firm, sensible and undemonstrative. No one – not even those closest to her – had any comprehension of that inner core of passionate, imaginative essence that lay hidden deep within the outer layers of respectability and reserve that the exposure to danger and exhilaration had awoken. The rebellious spirit for adventure was not yet quenched and Wendy silently vowed she would reach the Indians before Hook, let the consequences fall where they may.

She had not forgotten the warning the captain had given her earlier. _If you wish to test the limits of my patience, you will see just how merciless I can be. _The thought of him discovering her treachery inspired a silken thread of fear within her. That fear haunted her almost as keenly as he did, drowned her with evocative imaginings. She remembered again that icy stillness in his eyes like the surface of a dark lake, so unbreakable. Her own eyes were steady and grave, a misty cloud-blue that in some lights was almost grey. What was it about _his _that frightened and fascinated her so? What depths dwelt beneath that visceral mirror of deepest blue? What evocative curse had stolen over her senses that made her forgetful of every rational instinct of self-preservation that society and her own intelligence had instilled in her?

It had become lost under the melodious whisper of a damning voice, enveloping her. The treacherous depths of her mind were possessed by touches of silver and near-kisses that froze her senses. A terrible twist on a familiar fairy tale.

_How will it end? _she wondered.

She had to leave this ship, leave _him_, before –

Closing her eyes, Wendy fell back onto the hammock, her fingers clasping the acorn around her throat as though it were a sacred talisman that could protect her from all harm. Never had Peter seemed so far from her, Peter whom she had kissed with all the fatalism of doomed love...

_Save me, Peter, _she thought fervently. _Save me from Hook and most of all, save me from myself –_

Suddenly, her eyes flew open.

She listened intently, her formerly weary body tense and alert in every nerve. Footsteps. Approaching the cabin.

The metallic clatter of a key turning in the lock. For a brief instant, Wendy considered making a break for the door, but dismissed the idea immediately. Such a foolhardy venture in broad daylight would only result in her getting caught at once and there was no sense in ruining her chances of escaping tonight by acting too impulsively now. Better that they thought her cowed and beaten, resigned to her imprisonment. With that thought in mind, she closed her eyes again and awaited the intruder, feigning sleep.

She heard the protesting shriek of rusty hinges as the door swung open. Someone – Smee perhaps – was in the cabin with her. There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch on, unbearably long, as she waited with the helpless disadvantage of being unable to see anything. Whoever it was seemed to hesitate, doubtless thrown by the sight of her apparently in a deep sleep. Perhaps it would be enough to make them leave.

Wendy lay still, legs tangled among the sheets in the pretense of slumber. Stasis in the darkness. Trembling hands and beating heart.

Then -

The sound of footsteps drawing closer. Not the slow, shuffling steps of the bo'sun, but firm and deliberate. The distinct, precise _click_ of booted heels against the floorboards. Her pulse thudded. It was him.

No, she could not know that for certain. But who else on this ship moved with such lithe grace? So soft and suave –

_Click. _

_Click. _

She waited. Heavy silence through the black of her closed lids. Her nerves vibrated. Tense. The floorboards creaked beside her. Her hands knotted in the sheets slick between her fingers.

Deprived of sight, all of her other senses were painfully enhanced, and her imagination filled the void left by her closed eyes. A spill of ebony curls lost in the depths of the richly embroidered jacket of darkest midnight-blue, gold lining its brocade edges. Pale, gaunt cheeks, forget-me-not eyes that she could _feel _fixed upon her with unwavering intensity. Their gaze burned cold and yet she was warm, so terribly warm.

The faint musk of wine and cigars, the lingering tang of salt air. It took all her self-will not to tremble with a paroxysm of emotion. The hammock swayed dangerously.

_What was he doing?_

Wendy bit her tongue in an effort to remain silent. The iron-bitter tang of blood hit her mouth. The metallic taste forcefully bringing to mind the sensation of his touch, like shards of pleasure. Anticipation thudded in her blood.

Closer still. She could feel him standing over her. Adrenaline pulsed through her deliberately still form. She pressed her face harder into the pillow, fearing her expression would betray her. She could hear him breathing, and – she jumped – the brush of his mustache against her throat. Sudden fear lanced through her. If he thought to look more closely at the acorn that hung around her neck…

Her eyelashes fluttered a fraction. Barely. Was that the glint of silver she caught, half-upraised?

For a quivering moment, she was half-inclined to rise in offended feminine pride, but curiosity stilled her. She was too intrigued as to what he would do next. He must have a purpose in coming here; though for the life of her she could not understand what it might be. She alone knew about the fairy dust that lay concealed in the locket nestled between her collarbones; of other communication with Peter, there had been none. There was nothing here for him to find _(except the pistol –)_

His sudden touch froze her still, flaring in her skin. His fingers were daggers of ice. The ensnaring brand almost dragging a gasp from her tightly pressed lips. She felt those fingers deliberately trace the contours of her profile, exquisitely slow, lacing across her cheek. Jarring force. Lingering at the kiss that was searing at the corner of her mouth. She felt its burn. Was he about to –

If he did, she would have to act, whatever the consequences.

Then the touch slid away, smoothing the damp hair back from her brow, cool on her burning skin, and he sighed – shuddered?

"Damn it to hell," he muttered softly to the silent cabin. "I _won't –_"

Whatever else he had meant to say remained unuttered. The footsteps retreated. Wendy heard the door closing and the turn of the lock. Empty silence. She sat upright, unable to suppress the shaking of her body.

_What was all that about?_

The warning, low, sonorous roll of thunder startled her. The hammock swayed unsteadily, following the sudden lurching movement of the ship as it dipped to one side. The captain was right. It would be a wild night.

The lethargy of sleep stole upon her, but she fought it down. These next few hours were a waiting game in which she must discern as much as possible what was happening outside, and choose the right time to act. And sleep was no longer the guarantee of repose it once was. He followed her into the very depths of her dreams.

Wendy gazed out the porthole window, her expression solemn and introspective. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she stared unseeingly at the rain that blurred the glass in silver trails, resigning herself to sleeplessly await the approach of night. She did not dare close her eyes, dreading the captain's spirit walking through her dreams, the icy touch of his fingers, the whisper of his soft voice, sharp and cold as metal –

Dreams, she thought, could be very dangerous things.


	5. Day 2: Part 2

**FORGET-ME-NOT**

_Your cruel device  
__Your blood like ice  
__One look could kill  
__My pain, your thrill_

_I wanna love you but I better not touch (don't touch)  
__I wanna hold you but my senses tell me to stop  
__I wanna kiss you but I want it too much (too much)  
__I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison_

_You're poison  
__Running through my veins  
__You're poison  
__I don't wanna break these chains_

('Poison', Tarja Turunen)

* * *

**- Day 2 -**

**Part II**

She must have slept, for when Wendy opened her eyes, the darkness was complete. She sat up on the swaying hammock, wide-awake at once, tense and listening. At first, nothing but the loud thudding of her heart in her ears and the unsteady groan of the lurching ship as it swayed from side to side like a drunken man. Then she realized it was raining – no, _pouring_ – the water lashing in violent torrents against the window, blurring the glass. There was a great rolling of thunder, low and sonorous, now rising and falling over the crashing of the waves. The cabin was black as a pit, and she waited some moments for her eyes to adjust to the intense gloom. She could discern the shadowed outline of the shelf, the lamps swinging above her head with a low, persistent creaking, the round window like an eye gazing into the storm.

Her first instinct was to reach for a light, but it occurred to her that it would not be wise to draw attention to the fact that she was stirring. The crew seemed to have forgotten about her for the time being, and she intended to keep it that way. Instead, she moved barefoot across the cabin to the porthole window, pressing her hands against the cold glass to steady herself, trying to discern what was happening through the black deluge. Through the rattling pane, she could feel the chill draught blowing on her shoulders, whistling through her thin shirt like a blade of ice, and she shivered. But she also noticed how loose the pane was, how easily it could be pried loose, or broken –

Wendy started back in shock. A face was thrust against the window; she caught a glimpse of matted hair and flashing teeth and wide eyes –

She pressed herself back against the wall, out of sight, huddled in the close, musty darkness. She heard a shout from outside, "Storm rose up from nowhere –"

"The captain's mad if he thinks we can –"

The voices moved away and she breathed again. Trembling and alive in every nerve, Wendy's fingers stole to the acorn around her neck, clutching it tightly as she considered her next move. Falling asleep had been a mistake, and a foolish one at that; she had no idea what hour it was or even how near the coast the ship had reached. Time was of the utmost essence. It was a precarious balance. Leave too soon and she would be too far from the shore, and every moment free was to run the risk of discovery, but leave it too long and she would be too late to warn the Indians. And if the storm had come upon them before they had reached the Indian village, there was a strong chance that Hook would have been halted in his enterprise, which meant that for all she knew, they could be miles out on the high seas by now. It seemed folly to chance an escape attempt when she had no idea where they were; but on the other hand, she felt duty-bound to aid the Piccaninny tribe if they were in danger. Furthermore, the storm and general confusion were other factors weighted to her advantage. She might never have such an opportunity again. At the very least, she could slip out unobserved and discover where they were. She was aware too that time was running out, and she no longer had the implicit trust that Peter would come for her before the imminent deadline that loomed before her like a dark cloud. And if he did not…

No, she would think about that when the time came. Wendy drew a deep breath, willing down those weak, debilitating fears. _All is lost with me if I look ahead._

She groped her way back to the bed and sat down, mulling over her situation. She was Wendy Moira Angela Darling, a girl of twenty years old, alone and held captive on a ship with a deadly captain, who if he knew what she was intending, would rid himself of her at last with one swift thrust of his hook. She had no weapons save an untried pistol and no certainty of rescue while he had a crew of men to do his bidding and even alone, was three times her strength, as he had proven last night. All she had was the fairy dust and the cover of darkness to aid her.

Well, she had faced danger before now. If she could defy him as a child of thirteen, there was nothing preventing her from doing so now – nothing, except her own fear.

And she would not be afraid of Captain James Hook.

A great, rending _crack _split the air like a gunshot, the ship tilting alarmingly on its axis. Streaks of white-green lightning illuminated the cabin, throwing everything into brief, hyper-real clarity. Too bright, too heightened. There was something unnatural about the storm. Wendy felt a shiver of trepidation. _Peter, _she thought suddenly. _He's angry._ His face flashed vividly in her mind as she remembered it best, full of fire, fancy and mischief – he would have thrown himself into a fight with such impossible odds as these. And once upon a time, she would have followed him anywhere. For him, she would have risked all things, dared all things, defied all things, endured all things. Wendy smiled faintly, though there was little warmth in it. _I'm not that little girl any more, _she thought. She had changed, the whole world had changed, Peter alone had remained unaltered.

But perhaps she was not so far from that girl yet. She was young and daring and _alive. _And as for the captain… an elusive whisper stirred in her memory, a youthful face stern with unconscious cruelty… _leave Hook to me. _But there was no Peter here to fight her battles. All along, she had known it must inevitably come to a confrontation between her and the captain. This was something she had to do alone. And if Hook killed her, it would be her own fault. Her delicate hands, folded neatly in her lap, suddenly clenched into white fists. _Let him try._

A pathological addiction to danger, John would have called it, regarding her with narrow criticism through his spectacles with an expression that somehow in the intervening years had become their father's. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps she was mad. But better mad than the numbed, empty state of existence she had placidly endured for too many years.

There were two methods of escape open to her; the door or the window. The door was a heavy, oaken piece of wood, locked securely from the outside and all but useless to her. The porthole window was small and would be a struggle to get through, but the glass pane was already loose and its breaking could easily be attributed to the violence of the storm. She had come too far now to contemplate turning back on her course, not when escape was so close.

Wendy threw open the dresser, her first thought to retrieve the pistol she had stolen from the captain's cabin. She withdrew the weapon from its hiding place, unwrapping it from the cloak she had tightly bound it in. With a sudden thought, she swathed the heavy garment around her shoulders, drawing the hood up over her head to conceal her features. The cape was made for a taller form than hers, and whispered along the ground as she moved. The pistol she wrapped in the folds of her discarded gown, hoping that by doing so, she would stifle the inevitable sound. Slowly, she approached the window, her heart beating thickly in her ears. She could hear the rattle of glass, thrumming in the wind. It would be easy, the work of seconds if she could only muster her courage. The seconds dragged by and still she hesitated…

"Damnation," she swore under her breath. The act of cursing filled her with a bold, reckless sort of confidence, resolve trembling in every nerve.

And she smashed the pistol through the window.

The sound of splintering glass was immediately lost in the violent roar of the elements. Wendy had the presence of mind to stumble back, wary of any shards being blown back into the cabin, the muffled pistol clenched tightly in her hands. The air howled into the room and she let it lash against her face and arms, careless of the fierce, wet, biting cold. It was sharp, exhilarating, and it drew a breathless, elated laugh from Wendy's lips. The wild spirit of adventure was upon her and she would have dared anything in that moment. The night, the storm, the captain's wrath could not deter her; let them do what they would.

She set about removing any traces of glass that clung to the window frame, near-blinded by the rain that hit her with the monumental force of a crashing wave. The urgency of speed was upon her now; she did not know how long this rush of adrenaline would last and dreaded that at any moment she might lose her nerve.

Leaning through the window, Wendy braced her hands either side of the aperture that was already slippery with rain, giving little grip to her fingers. Slowly, she eased herself up and out, the violence of the wind and blinding rain unsteadying her momentarily, almost making her lose her balance. The wooden frame of the window dragged against the bones of her hips and she gritted her teeth at the pain, hearing the tearing rend of fabric. With a vigorous twist, her upper body came through with an effort, and she braced herself for the fall.

The drop was not severe, but the rush through arctic space seemed to go on forever and the impact of the hard wooden deck slamming into her back knocked the breath from her. Wendy gave herself a moment to recover, lying curled up against the ice-glazed wood that was reeling and unsteady with the powerful motion of the sea.

At last she dragged herself to her feet; one hand making certain the pistol remained at her side and the other touching the fairy-dust that hung around her throat. Then she stepped out into the vacuous black.

* * *

She was drenched within moments, the rain running over face in icy streams, falling into her eyes and mouth. Moving through the storm was like falling through dark water as it closed over her head and made her feel as though she was drowning. Wendy shivered and pulled the cloak tighter around her body. Hair streamed down in long soaked strands over her shoulders. The wooden deck was slippery and frosted with the beginnings of ice. A bottle rolled across the floor, narrowly missing her feet. Beyond was a dark void. It took several moments for her to gather her bearings; she could barely see her own hand in front of her. Only the thunder. The stormy winds. The rain.

She moved unsteadily across the deck, her chill breath before her, fanning the ghostly night. The long hair and tender skin had suffered mildly from her ungainly scramble through the window. She had no fixed idea of where she was going, only that she needed to remain undiscovered long enough to use the fairy dust. The pistol was curved intimately against her thigh and it was no small degree of comfort, knowing it was there.

Out in the open, she felt she had entered the very heart of the raging storm. The air was cold and thunderous and static, the rain coming down in black sheets. The drenched sails lashing violently, whipping against the distant mast that thrust upwards into black oblivion. Wendy moved in that direction feeling as though she was travelling through a dark tunnel, the surrounding night starless and fathomless, endless dark water crashing against the sides of the ship. Around her, shadowy figures, cries and shouts. And no sign of the ship's ghostly captain.

Someone staggered past an arm's length away and Wendy pressed herself back into the soaked shelter of the sails, hardly daring to breathe. Not that anyone would hear her in this din…

Then, emerging through the lashing winds, she heard the captain's voice. "_Move, you scurvy lubbers!"_

Cold, knifing fear lanced through her heart. Even though he was still mercifully distant, she withdrew further out of sight, feeling the heavy sails beating against her back like colossal bird wings. Pushing the soaked lengths of hair back from her face, Wendy struggled to discern his form through the blurring darkness. There – dressed in dark, old-fashioned clothes two centuries out of fashion. The edge of a black cloak that had been carelessly cast aside. She wondered that he did not feel the cold when she was half-dying of it, but then, this was a man who had defied death, what fear would the storm hold for him?

The glint of his hook caught the flare of lightning as he gestured lightly. Cool and methodical amidst the surrounding chaos. Both entrancing and frightening. The men scattered at his command, dispersing like mist into the storm's clutches. Even in their absence, the taste of fear lingered palpable in the air. Wendy wished that she too could flee, but she could only wait, wrapping the folds of her cloak tighter around herself and watching him almost against her will.

Left alone, the captain's stance altered. He leaned heavily against the deck, a distant and pensive expression on his face. Even beneath the lurid flares of lightning, he no longer looked like the fearsome adversary she knew, but only terribly weary. Emotion had etched deep rivets into the lines of his features, dragging the arrogant curve of his mouth downwards.

"Pan will crawl at my feet when all is done," he murmured, so softly that Wendy could hardly hear him. His jaw tightened as he looked away, a bleak look in his cold eyes. "Perhaps then I shall know some measure of peace. Something that can let me find an end to this wretched means of living."

She stared at him because he looked miserable. He looked _miserable. _Wendy turned away. She could not endure this, the thought of him being a man of _feeling. _She would not pity him. If he was lonely, he had only himself to blame. His men were little better than cowed dogs lashing out, but _his_ qualities had hinted at a nature that could have been fine and noble, yet instead, he chose to waste his talents on petty raids and schemes. She was too conscious of her own superiority, too aware of his innate cruelty to allow herself to listen to that uncomfortable voice in the back of her mind.

But still that feeling crept in softly like a thief in the night, whispering to her that things could be different, that were she to look past the cold exterior… but Wendy silenced those treacherous thoughts, too fearful to contemplate, instead wrapping herself with the familiar frosted indifference that fell over her like a comforting blanket, the only protection she had against such a man. She would kill him before she would comfort him. Too many times had she fallen for an appearance of his compassion, his _humanity. _Never again would she be fooled by him.

She felt her way along the deck, staggering now and then as the ship dipped and rose over the tumultuous motion of the rolling waves. She had not yet formed a plan in her mind other than to put as much distance between herself and the captain as possible. She knew it was safer when she kept away from him. That didn't stop her from thinking about him, or from feeling a stirring of empathy for his self-inflicted purgatory. It didn't stop her from being afraid of him, either.

She could almost imagine those eyes on her, drowning, evocative. Haunting every step she took, watching her from the shadows with murderous intent. At every step she fought down the urge to glance over her shoulder, dreading discovery. Nothing but the sails billowing wildly. Shadows. In truth, she was little better than a child stumbling around in the dark. Even now, a part of her was hoping that Peter would come to her rescue. She had never felt so alone.

The straitlaced young lady of London drawing rooms seemed far away, a distant dream, that elusive existence of bone-china and cream, linen and lace. Everything so fragile, so delicate. Universes away from the violence and fury and danger of being flung out on the high seas, the crash of the waves, the salt winds lashing against her face, the sharp, heady tang of oiled tar and leather. This was living, this _was _life_, _more fully than she had ever known it. She was no longer an empty doll with heavy, coiled hair and a heartbreakingly weary gaze, a docile automaton reclining on a gilt chair, half-listening to polite conversation, and yet always feeling like she was falling out and away from the world. Never had she felt more truly herself than now.

She was still afraid, yes, but beneath the fear there was a strange, excited feeling in her heart. It took a moment for her to recognize the sensation that had been absent from her soul for so long. That she had felt when rising above the white-plumed clouds all those years ago, casting aside all troubles. That feeling… wild and unpredictable… like she was _free_. That was what Peter had meant to her, why she had loved him and clung to his memory these long years –

"But _what_ have we here?"

That voice froze her blood.

The first awful thought that flashed upon her was that it was all over, he had found her… but when she dared look up, paralyzed, her heart trapped rigid in her throat, she realized the captain was not looking at her but at the crew. His voice unfurling like a sharp lash.

"Must I press on you the urgency of secrecy and speed? Or do you need another reminder?" The hook flashed with menacing intent.

Wendy drew as far back into the rigging as she was able, stumbling slightly against a pile of crates. Tarred ropes rattled against her arms in the keening wind. She held herself impossibly still, shivering a little on the black ice. Her fingers curled around the handle of her pistol.

Metal-capped boots sounding across the wooden deck. They stopped barely feet from her. The sharp whisper of indrawn breath was lost in the sobbing winds.

Hook cast an eye over the crew, forbidding and silent. Wendy shivered at that aura of danger, like a piece of blown glass with a sharp edge. Impossible that he could not hear the wild bounding of her heart. Over the palpitating spasms, she heard the sullen, resentful grumbling of the men.

Hook regarded them with a curling sneer. "Such a lily-livered brand of cowards I've never before had the misfortune to endure."

"'Tis not cowardice when it's common sense."

Wendy leaned forward, curiosity overriding her caution. She _knew_ that voice, careless, audacious, a note of rebellion coloring the accented tones.

The captain's smile was like a knife cutting through flesh.

"Care to elaborate, Cecco?"

"Look around you, Captain. The storm's thrown us half off-course already. It's suicide to try and get any further inland; we'll be dashed to pieces on the rocks. He controls the weather, they say, and I'm not prepared to find out if it's true. We'll not go any further on this fool's errand with you."

Hook's blue eyes narrowed. "Mutiny, is it?"

The dark-featured Italian shrugged, arms folded across his broad chest. "If that's what it pleases you t'call it."

"It does please me," said the captain, and there was no sardonic mockery in his voice, only a cold and deadly certainty. "You'll not come out and challenge me directly – oh, no, you'll whisper and spread dissension in the hope that one of these cringing fools will eventually summon up the gumption to slide a knife through my ribs and save you the trouble. Be assured – they won't."

"None of us wish for trouble, Captain," said Cecco, though there was still something insolently casual in his tone. "I just wanted to prove my point."

"And what point was that, Cecco?" the captain asked, carefully polite.

"You're out of your depth, Captain. You've gambled too much this time, just as you did before. We sided with you the last time when it cost you your life, and before that, a hand. We had seven years of peace – Pan left us be and we him. This ship was as good as mine until you came back –"

"And there lies your weakness," said Hook softly. "_I came back. _You underestimate your enemies, just as you overrate your allies. You spend your power and your charm needlessly, thinking sweet words can buy a man's loyalty. Do you think a single one of these curs would stand alongside you and defy _me?_ You're arrogant, and worse than that, you're a fool. And when that compromises me and everything I've worked to achieve – oh, _that _I don't forgive lightly."

The brawny sailor met Hook's gaze defiantly, flashing a bold grin. "You want a fight, Captain? Once and for all to decide who's really in charge? Choose your weapon – swords or pistols – and we'll settle this now."

The tension hung between them, silent except for the howl of the wind, and lashing of salt-water against the lurching sides of the ship. Two silhouettes standing motionless in the quicksilver rain. The wild night took on an oppressive hush, of held breath, of turning tides, of waiting for something. Something dangerous.

"No," said the captain evenly, at last. "I think not. You're worth neither the time nor the effort."

Wendy almost cried out at the shot that rang out. Through the icy rain, the air hung heavy with gun-smoke and through the haze, someone was huddled on the deck, writhing, moaning –

Cecco was lying across the wooden boards, hands curled around his outstretched leg, fingers black with tar-thick blood pulsing through the open wound. Wendy pressed a hand to her mouth, white and trembling with shock. Her head swam. She had never seen so much blood.

Hook meanwhile had shouldered his rifle effortlessly, standing back carelessly to admire his handiwork. He looked down at the wounded man for some moments, contempt curling around the edges of his mouth. Then he moved forward, leaning in close to speak low and intent in the pirate's ear.

"Take that as a warning," he whispered, "Or next time I'll hurl you overboard and see if you fare any better with the mermaids. I saw a man die that way once; they pulled him under and it was a full half-hour before his corpse bobbed up, bloated and swollen with a smile on his dead lips. That put an end to his dissension once and for all."

At that moment, Wendy's courage almost failed her. She could feel her forehead, chill with perspiration. Her limbs felt heavy, as though weighted down with lead, and she was shivering feverishly. And the darkness… the darkness seemed to gather together in one swirling whole, more deeply black than anything she had known, and she felt her legs weakening, a surge of nausea rising up inside her -

_Oh, my God! Am I going to faint?_

The terror of falling here and being found by the captain overrode all other fear. Whatever happened, she must not faint and be discovered. A blaze of energy galvanized her sinking form. She raised her heavy, throbbing head… if she lay down now, she would not get up… ignoring the cramping pain in her limbs, she pushed away from the heavy mass of oiled ropes, one thought in her pounding head… _I must not faint. I must not faint. I must not faint._

Her cloak was caught, enmeshed in the rigging. Despite all her efforts, Wendy could not pull it free, so abandoned the drenched, cumbersome garment where it lay in a tangled mess, lashed by the winds. Blinking the water from her lashes, she looked out into the blackness, into the screaming winds. It took several deep, steadying breaths before she could trust herself to move without falling.

She placed a cautious foot on the slick planks, groping her way across the deck, almost blinded by the salt-blackened rain that ran cold down her spine. But if she could hardly see, neither could they; and she clung mindlessly to that thought as a kind of grim solace. Out here, in the dark in her shirt and breeches, she could easily pass for a cabin boy. No one would look twice at her. She held the pistol in front of her with a shaking hand. Even if her aim wasn't true, she might at least be able to hold someone off if she were caught. It was only a matter of time now, anyway – if her empty cabin had not already been discovered, someone would inevitably see her out here. It was now or never, and she had come too far now not to see this thing through to the end. Purpose kept her upright and moving. The uncontrollable shuddering in her limbs had abated, and she felt stronger, more herself again. The momentary feeling of faintness had passed and she already despised herself for the weakness.

She moved warily, conscious of the ice lying slick on the deck. Her loose hair kept blowing into her eyes and troubling her. The rocks rose jaggedly in the distance. Further away than they had been. Much further. Wendy shook the hair from her eyes and looked again to make certain she was not mistaken.

She could have laughed in disbelieving relief.

_They were retreating._

Somehow – _miraculously – _ the captain had relented. It would be peril to draw close to the shore in this weather and risk being dashed to pieces on the rocks. Even Hook was not mad enough to attempt a raid in such a storm. The weather – _Peter, _she thought with a sudden rush of conviction – had defeated him. He would go no further tonight. No villages would burn, no men would die. She should have been rejoicing in Peter's triumph, but all she could think of was the fact that the captain's retribution would be swift and terrible. But the Indians were safe for the time being. At the moment, it was only her own well-being she had to be concerned about.

Forked prongs of lightning splayed across the sky, throwing the ship into ghastly illumination. The wind whistling an eerie tune. Memories of the ghost stories that had terrified her brothers in bygone years rose in her mind. How distant it had seemed in the warmth and safety of the nursery, the lights bright and glowing, Nana's head resting in her lap. Not nearly so entertaining now, in the ice and wind-howled night, trapped in the cold wilds with no help in sight.

The rain ran black as she approached the ship's highest point. She braced herself against the mast. Andromeda bound to the rock. Her teeth were chattering. She groped blindly, fumbling for the clasp of fairy dust. The deck creaked dangerously beneath her feet, the warning of falling into darkness and cold, of falling down and down.

As though drawn by a force greater than herself, Wendy found herself moving forward, gazing over the edge with a kind of petrified fascination. The impossible gulf as darkly deep, as blue as his eyes, threatening to swallow her whole –

The tempest roared in her ears. She was lost in the cold vacuum. It seemed everything was shattering into icy whirling fragments – sensation, reality, consciousness –

It was as though she hovered on the brink of two worlds – the familiar world she knew, of reason and responsibility, dreams imprisoned beneath whale-boned corsets, weighed down with endless expectations, desires concealed by light comments of such delicate _courtesy _– and the Neverworld, where life burst out in sensory, vivid colours, and every emotion was intense, _heightened, _where each moment was to dance the line of passion and danger –

The weather howled and wept, outraged. For a moment, doubt made her hesitate. To go back to the dull masquerade of London, where she hardly knew herself – was that what she was fighting so hard for?

She had no choice. For what alternative awaited her? It was too terrifying to contemplate.

Lighting flashed, blinding. Her lips turned almost blue with frost, with bone-pale fingers she clung to the mast like a drowned corpse. A strange, phantom Wendy who was pale as death. She shook her head, the salt stinging her eyes. Below her, the sea churned, _groaned, _waiting to pull her under. It was a terrifying fall. The cold, icy water, the endless, swirling darkness. If she faltered… if she did not believe hard enough…

Her frozen hand clutched at her throat. One happy thought. Just one –

_Think of Peter, think of dancing to the light of the fairies under a canopy of trees while the stars burned bright overhead…_

She caught the image in her mind, held it captive. The fairy dust tight in her clenched hand. Her cold, stiff fingers reached out to open the varnished locket. Poised, bracing herself, she took a deep breath –

And found herself looking into the terrible face of Captain James Hook.

* * *

A thrill of terror pulsed through Wendy's heart. His lean black form rose before her like a creature from the deeps, silhouetted eerily by the wild flares of lightning. His normally tightly coiffed curls were wild and loose, water streaming in torrents through the slick black locks. She could see nothing save the harsh planes of his white face and the lambent gleam of those blue, blue eyes. And he was angry – no, he was _furious_. More furious than she ever seen him.

The deck suddenly lurched and would have flung her overboard had she not been clinging to the heavy coils of rope wrapped around the mast. She was shivering more violently than she ever had… she was feverish, dying of cold… no, she was burning…

He moved towards her across the black ice. His livid face ghostly pale and cold as ice. The memory of Cecco lying on the deck with the metallic tang of blood in the air rose in her mind and almost unsteadied her. Metal flashed in the flare of lightning. Her heart _froze – _

The captain smiled frighteningly, the stormy, ruthless expression in his eyes belying the meticulous politeness in his smooth voice.

"Well, what now, my beauty?"

* * *

"A fine night to dive overboard. Is that what you intended?"

Wendy stared at him. He was more furious than she had ever seen him and she knew she would have to tread carefully. His eyes were wild and wide, too dark. A flare of lightning suddenly cast its brutal light across his distorted features, and she had seen nothing on earth like the expression on his face.

"Wouldn't that be _reneging _on the terms of our agreement?"

She found her voice. "Agreements don't mean anything among men with no honour –"

A flash of white as his teeth glinted unpleasantly. "And yet you are the one breaking your word."

His cold voice slid over her like a thousand knives. She thought he really was going to kill her. This was not the mocking, debonair, elegant pirate she had come to know. This was a wild, savage stranger who faced her, and one she did not know how to fight. All her innate powers of articulacy fled. She, to whom words had always been a mastery, such an effortless way of weaving stories, could think of nothing to say, no means to defend herself.

The captain smiled again. Toying with her. Playing with her life like a cruel cat pinning its victim with sharp claws, exquisitely drawing out the moment of delivering that final blow.

"Well, my beauty? Are you going to jump? Or are you going to shoot me with that pistol you stole from my cabin?"

So, he knew. It should not have surprised her, but the realization caused a sinking weight of despair inside her chest, icy and leaden. It was another defeat, and she did not know how much longer she could fight him. All along this twisted game had been on his terms. It was over at last. She had lost and he had won.

"Come now, dear girl. I am waiting." He paused with impeccable courtesy, pale hand extended, a smile playing around his narrow mouth. His eyes blue as the flames that danced along the edge of a burning coal.

The pistol hung uselessly in her hand, numbed fingers frozen around the handle. He was laughing at her. And with a moment of startling clarity, Wendy could read his thoughts, clear as a mirror. He knew she couldn't do it. She was not capable. There wasn't enough hatred in her soul, not enough strength in her feminine frame. She, the spoiled darling plucked from the heart of civilized society, could never summon up the resolution to kill a man. She was too soft, too gentle and restrained to be truly ruthless.

But he had not accounted for that wild, raw instinct beyond rational control, the innate impulse of survival that leapt up like a searing flame in her chest and made her act. That made her point the pistol directly at his blackened heart and pull the trigger.

* * *

There was no sound but a faint, hollow _click._

For a moment, sheer disbelief rendered her numb. He must be dead – the pistol must have fired, any other alternative was impossible –

The pistol fell from her nerveless fingers. Something like a cry of horror rose and died in her throat. The weapon lay uselessly on the deck. Despairing fury rose inside her, at herself. She had not even thought to check it was loaded, a precaution even a child of ten would have taken. And he had known. Of course he had known. She could never outwit him, never defeat him –

Slowly, Wendy raised her eyes to the captain. He had not moved, had not even flinched when she aimed the pistol at his heart. That deadly stillness had every nerve in her body screaming at her to run. There was no doubt in her mind that he was going to kill her. The cold masked her face and she could not move. There was a low humming in her ears, like static electricity. She was still terrified, but the fear seemed closed away behind a glass wall; she could not touch it. Nothing but the ice lashing over her burning skin, his eyes black and incredulous with disbelief and fury.

"You realize that is twice now you have tried to kill me. It won't happen a third time." His voice deceptively caressing, venom lacing its soft threads. He continued in that same tone of terrible calm, "I'll not ask how you escaped, nor how you managed to get into my cabin earlier. If I find Smee has been remiss in his watch over you, it will be a reckoning for him. And for you as well, I think, since I expressly warned you not to defy me –"

Wendy looked over the deck. It was still not too late… if she was fast – he could not stop her –

"You stupid girl –"

A feral hand shot out, icy fingers deadly around her shoulder, hard enough to break her bones, pushing her back into the mast. Hauled through the air, her back slammed against the wood with painful force, driving the air from her lungs. _He's gone mad, _was her first thought, and she waited, anticipating the dreaded moment when his irises would flare crimson and the hook would put an end to her defiance forever.

Closer. Pressing against her lungs, stealing her breath. A frisson of energy ran through her at his nearness. His skin glimmered with unearthly pallor. Fingers crept around her throat. A kiss of cool fire on the back of her neck, stroking the numbed flesh to life.

Wendy recoiled. "Don't touch me -"

"No? You hardly seem to be in a position to make demands, dear girl."

Her nails dug into the mast behind her, leaving bloody streaks in the wood. The shirt was plastered to her skin. His tall shadow loomed over her, darker than the night. His hand like a chain around her flesh. Tugging. Wendy stole a breath and pain sliced through her chest.

"You would be killed in an instant," he said grimly.

"Better that than remain here," she returned, and winced again as his grip tightened.

His expression was fierce and rigid. "Have you ever known the cold beneath the water? What lurks in the dark, icy depths? Let me tell you, my beauty, _those _stories have no happy ending."

Again, she heard those words that were echoing in her head like a constant litany. _The places where dead men dwell with things that move in the deep. _It had terrified her in the warmth of his cabin, and it scared her even more now, in the cold and the dark, and the water roaring beneath.

Wendy looked up and saw nothing but deep blue eyes. Drowning eyes. She swallowed hard, hiding her terror. Not for anything would she tell him about the fairy dust. The acorn trembled in her clutched hand. It was the one power she held, and she silently vowed he would have to _drag _it from her dead body before she would confess it –

"I'll take my chances."

A blur of movement and his hook was pressed at her chest. The water caught the flaring light like quicksilver. He hissed, icy breath grazing her wind-burned lips.

"You will do _no _such thing."

She looked away from the glaring sheen of bright metal. Long, curling hair brushed her throat. Sliding like wet silk over her thudding pulse. So black against her white, white skin. The wind tore at her face, her hair, rain lashing in salty waves of ice over her numbed flesh. Wendy felt none of it. She was aware only his eyes burning into her, blue ice piercing her soul.

She was playing with fire, she realized distantly, with something she did not understand. All she knew was that she was afraid – of the future, of fate, of _him _– but she could not pull away. Energy shimmered between them like silver lightning. He did not move. She did not move. Her heart throbbed against the deadly point. The deck rolled beneath them, the hard mast at her back and the hook at her breast the sole things tethering her to reality –

"Well, Captain?" she said at last, her breath gusting the cold night air, ripped away from her by the biting wind. "You won't kill me and you can't keep me here –"

"I wouldn't be so certain," Hook growled.

"What does it matter to you, anyway?" she cried, half-blinded by the rain, the wild fall of her hair over her face and shoulders. The elements a howling black fury around them. "Why do you care so much about a foolish wager?"

"Death and damnation!" he swore violently. A flash of silver and the hook slammed into the mast beside her head, quivering. "You know why."

And his mouth descended on hers.

* * *

It was the longest kiss she had ever known, if it could even be called a kiss, this dizzying onslaught of the senses, a lancing, torturous thrill that had no beginning or end, only a spiraling, splintering vortex of piercing sensation.

Wendy's first instinct was to struggle. Her hands scraped at the wood. Pushed at him. Wet midnight blue velvet against her palms. He only kissed her harder, gripped her harder, forcing her back into the mast. Wanting beyond all reason. Rain streamed over her shoulders in a shower of ice. The casing of fairy dust slipped through her shaking fingers and clattered onto the deck, forgotten. The kiss at the corner of her mouth withered and died, stolen forever. Then her mind rolled back and darkness overtook her.

She was lost in sensation. Breathless and dizzy and aching. That mouth hard, cold, cruel. It hurt. A silver hook in her soul. Stealing her breath. His moustache was rough against her sensitive skin. His body too forceful. Yet strangely not _enough_. Long fingers running over the wet planes of her face, her streaming hair, fierce, desperate. Then lower, pressing on the hammering pulse points of her throat, tugging at the openings of her shirt.

She stiffened in outrage, an edge of panic in her voice. "What – what are you doing?"

"Something I should have finished last night," the captain muttered hoarsely, his hook pulling at one of the laces, looking grimly satisfied as the material parted further.

"_Stop," _she said, and shoved against him.

For a moment, his eyes went wild and dark as the surrounding storm, a great, vacuous void threatening to drag her down into that wailing torrent of emotions… but then he drew himself up with easy grace, and it was the drawling, indifferent libertine that smiled down at her with detestable arrogance.

"Do you really want me to?" he said quietly.

That moment of hesitation was barely a fraction of a second, but it was enough to betray her. She saw it in the gleam of triumph that lit his intense gaze. She started as he placed a kiss against her neck, smiling into the curve of her jaw.

"I thought as much." Icy fingers trailed along her shoulder, lightning crackling in their wake. "Those poor, pitiful, fumbling boys never made you feel this, did they? And if they did, I'd blow their brains out. I said I'd not relinquish you, and I'll be _damned _before letting you go now –"

A flash of silver arced through the air. Trapped, bruising pressure, and she was shackled to the mast, curved metal catching at her hair, her clothes. There was no escape.

Escape…? Why should she want to escape? Not when – when –

She was in his arms, close enough to _breathe _him. His eyes hard and hungry on her, and beneath that glacial surface, she saw something else flicker and awaken, something desperate and entreating. Wanting to _let her in. _Powerful enough to make her catch her breath. It held her in place far more tightly than any force or aggression could ever have hoped to.

A part of her wanted to faint. A part of her was terrified. And yet –

"You're –" The howling wind stole away the rest of her words.

"Yes?"

"An enemy," she answered, quickly.

"Aye," he said softly. "So I am. And you should know better than to expect mercy from an enemy."

"I never asked for mercy," she managed, the words ending on an exhalation as his lips moved down the line of her throat. She could not think. Every touch was singing through her skin. She burned and froze and shivered and _felt – _

The ship groaned and shuddered. A lashing mist of rain and she could see nothing but his long, dark hair bent over her. Lips trailing across her burning skin. She struggled to breathe, numbed fingers tensing in his thick black hair as his mouth ravaged her throat, branding her. Sinking under the punishing pleasure of it. Her body acted without the authority of her mind, her heart straining wildly against his as though it would fly from her body.

A hand curved around her waist, drawing her fully to him. She could feel his warmth, his breath, and the pulse, pulse, pulse of his unfeeling heart. Blood flushed beneath her skin. She was shaking. Melting. She felt hot and cold, terrified and exhilarated. A buried part of her, suppressed and denied in daylight hours, had awoken, emerging through the pristine surface of delicacy and Edwardian refinement, from beneath the layers of lace and light perfume, she wanted – oh, she _wanted – _but had no words to express this need, new and burning, that until now had been trapped only in her dreams. A dark longing that had chained her soul to his these long years.

He raised his head. Wendy looked up into diamond blue and the diamonds shattered. His fingers pressing into the hollow spaces of her ribs, making her realize how _empty _she had been all these years. Her nerve endings ignited. Drowning waves rolled over her. Wants, desires. She was falling, falling through the water. Freefall in the dark.

This was different to the tentative flashes of childhood longing that the thought of Peter had always inspired, the innocent first love that had been alleviated by time and touched with the soft grace note of nostalgia. This stirred something inside her bright and blinding as a slashing blade, deadly every way she turned. All she knew was that whatever was happening was beyond her understanding. It was not normal or sane. Something – some instinct older than civilization – was answering to those seeking touches, impelling her body to obey a force more powerful than her rational mind or the calm, controlled reasoning of her everyday existence.

He stole another kiss from her numbed lips, bruising, leaving salt in the wound. Her blood turned to ice. A thrill of pain, biting sharpness. It was dizziness and exhilaration, torture and ecstasy. She was falling, she was drowning, only the force of his body holding her upright… She tried to breathe but there was not enough air in the world. He had stolen her air, stolen her heart, and now he was pulling her down like an anchor into the dark ocean, into the rain, wet and dark and blue, blue, blue –

Her legs were falling beneath her, she could not stand… for a dizzying moment, the ship lurched, the world lurched –

Then suddenly, he had picked her up, arms like steel girders around her, and he was carrying her through the darkness to – oh, but the rain was blinding, she could not see –

Ice flaking off her hair in glittering shards. Her head lay on his shoulder. His skin was cool, cool as in her dreams. Then warmth, light glowing, pulsing… they were inside a cabin – _his _cabin – and – _oh – _

His _bed –_

Was she really contemplating… she had never done _anything _like this… Everything was moving too fast, yet time seemed drawn out, torturously slow.

Silk beneath her chilled skin. He eased himself over her. Warm weight pinning her down in delirious imprisonment... _Breathe. Breathe._ The candles were extinguished with a hiss, smoke dissolving in the black air. Thick silence lay over the room. Blue eyes and all around was darkness. He was close, too close, drowning out the world. His touches like cool flames. Pulling the saturated shirt from her bared shoulder. A lithe hand slid under the wet fabric, caressing cold skin. Her senses reeled… she hadn't been wearing anything beneath that shirt… The blood rolled, ebbing through her veins.

A sensual, fluid movement and his dark-blue jacket hit the floor with a thud of metal and brocade. Leaning over her, icy eyes and silver and dark intent. She shuddered, thrills of excitement and need shivering through her with equal force. Everything she had desired and denied herself. But she couldn't… no matter how much she…

With a supreme effort, Wendy drew herself up; trying to summon the indignation she should have been feeling (_not the taut thrum of desire, burning low and steady in her blood_). Tedious lectures on propriety hovered on the fringes of her clouded mind, seeking entry. She grasped those prudish doctrines with something close to relief. It was easier to be affronted, offended, than to admit to herself that she…

_Wanted? Craved?_

No, he would never have her so easily. Had he really thought her so effortlessly overcome? A naïve girl immersed in dreams and stories, thrown into a situation utterly beyond her, she must have seemed easy prey to him. Her jaw tightened, her gaze stern and severe. There was an edge of anger in her that had gone beyond the point of being concealed by icy courtesy. He had taken everything else from her. What power was left to her but pride?

"You must be mad if you think I will –"

"My dear girl," the captain murmured distractedly, his unrelenting touch sliding up and along the contours of hips and waist and ribs as though memorizing them, slow and deliberate, "You already have."

Her eyes half-closed at those whisper-light caresses, so at variance to the hard urgency she had felt from him out on the deck. Cold fire danced across her skin. Her show of resistance was for form's sake rather than real conviction and that should have frightened her more than it did. But she was disarmed by smooth smiles, distracted by the sparks of sensation pulsing across her flesh. She, who had always prided herself on her puritanism and strong principles, had been brought down by the very man she loathed more than anyone in the world. It all flashed through her mind with fatalistic inevitability. A shattered reputation, shock and scandal. A family disgraced and a life exposed to gossip and ridicule. She clung to that thought as a last attempt at maintaining her sanity.

"My reputation will be ruined –"

He brushed a wet curl from her cheek, cool fingers tilting her jaw up to look intently into her face. "Do you really care for such things?"

"Of course I do. In fact –" she managed unsteadily, "I am far more traditional than you might think."

That drew a laugh from him. "If that were true you would be putting my own cutlass through me to protect your precious dignity rather than remain here. I think you have more than proven that you're not above killing me, if given the chance." Then Hook rose above her, and she drew an unsteady breath at the sight of the wild dark hair framing his hard face, falling in matted waves over his shoulders. Decadent and dangerous. He reached out a hand to touch her hair and paused, smiling. Wendy realized, startled, that he was giving her a chance to move. To run. "Will you?"

She lay breathless, looking up at him, eyes fever-bright. That space opened like an unbreachable chasm between them. The door seemed a thousand miles away. Her heart thudded. Why couldn't she move? Every rational lesson instilled in her was warning her to run, flee, escape –

But then… his mouth slid open over hers, and the bed, the cabin, the _world_ was spinning… and she could only cling to him, cling to him like a drowning mariner grasping at a lifeline. Bracing herself for the fall. His ruffled shirt fisted in her tense fingers, the hardness of his chest beneath. She could feel the heat coming off his skin. His mouth was metal and ice, and beneath that, the potent aroma of cigar smoke and rich wine. The taste of everything she hated. Everything she wanted.

This was wrong, forbidden. She knew the stories. Had _lived _them. This was Captain James Hook. The figure breathed from the depths of her darkest nightmares. The man who had tried to kill her. An enemy –

He bit the corner of her mouth, swallowing her breathless gasp –

The words resonated dimly in her mind. Vicious. Cruel. Ruthless. He was the _villain –_

His lips were at the nape of her neck and she melted into the soldering touch, liquid heat coiling inside her –

He had told her what he wanted without a trace of remorse. Peter gone, Peter dead… _I need someone to master. _

Only now did she begin to understand the true meaning of those words, too late. He could do anything, say anything, become anything, and she wouldn't leave. She couldn't. He had won at last, but if this was losing, she didn't care… she didn't care…

For the first time in her life, Wendy surrendered her control. She looked up at him, blue reflections through her long, damp lashes. Outside, blackness and chaos. Lightning flared against the windows. Rain lashing in streams down the glass. The cabin rocked, fatally, she would have fallen were she not already lying down…

The world inverted. The Wendy Darling of polite society, so formal and so set in her ways, would never have clutched at marble-hard skin, tasting the deadly flavour of his mouth, closing her eyes at the sensation of sharp metal digging into her waist, dragging along her hips. Feeling herself shivering, pushing, pulling, burning…

The silken shirt slid from his shoulders, his chest pale and bare in the heavy, pulsing darkness. The tension of those corded muscles, so indicative of raw, innate strength, sent a rippling of anticipation through her. She could feel the furious pounding of his heart under her fingertips, and that convinced her more than any show of eloquence could have that he truly was in earnest, that this was not merely some pirate's ruse, he really was half-maddened with longing. Somehow, that frightened her more than anything. Thrilled her more than she could have imagined.

This wasn't how it happened in the stories that were so familiar to her, so _safe _in their clear-cut boundaries of Good and Evil. This was… _oh!… _his open mouth blazed a trail along her bare shoulder, agonizingly slow, his lips lingering to taste the rain-soaked skin. Melting the ice in her veins. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to betray any reaction, but her self-control was slipping away at every response coaxed out by his insistent touches.

She was lost in blue velvet and blue brocade. Wet curves and warm skin. A hard hand slid downwards, tracing the contours of her breasts, pulling aside the clinging fabric, a sigh unintentionally escaping her parted lips as she shifted beneath him. Her heart was pulsing wildly against his splayed palm. Her soul searing. Breathing was hard, and his eyes were so hard, blue diamonds.

Cool planes of pale skin rose above her. The hook flashed in the darkness. A moment of fear and Wendy jumped at the piercing bite of silver against her parted lips. Pleasure and pain blurred. She exhaled shakily, breath misting the cool metal. A twist of his wrist and the captain laid it flat against her cheek, an arc of ice on her burning skin. There, on the base of her neck, sweeping her tangled hair over her shoulder. And again there, cold fingers down her back, caressing the sensitive skin from tip to base like a phantom lover's touch. Icy words dripping down her spine and, God… she was so cold…

Metal at her jaw. Forcing her head to the side, just as he had done the other night on the balcony (_as he had done seven years ago) _but now his lips were besieging the exposed flesh of her bared throat. Her collarbone. Dipping beneath the ragged edges of her clinging shirt. He bent his head over her, waves of black hair spilling damply across her breasts. Slow kisses, lingering, drawing her fully into his mouth. Her body arched up even as she clenched her jaw shut, determined not to utter a sound, as he – he –

She could fight herself no longer. Her shaking hands traced the line of his jaw, tense and hard, and she heard him groan a ragged exhalation against her skin. A strange thrill passed through her at this first sign of his weakness, her grip tightening unconsciously on him, silently willing him to _never stop_. No battle of smooth, languid, persuasive words was this meaningless series of low gasps and sharp exhalations. Instead, she was fighting for something she did not fully understand, but something he clearly did, because every movement, every graze of his tongue heightened this storm within her, now rising, now falling, intensifying beyond endurance…

Dimly, she was aware of his hand sliding across the plain of her stomach, her hips. Lower. Between –

She inhaled sharply. Arctic heat lanced through her. And the quivering beginnings of… something. Her body trembling like water, tangled silk beneath her and hardness above her. Fingers, so warm. Silver metal everywhere, so cold. Like icy wires. Tugging at places inside her that were hollow, aching, open. Waiting to be filled. Her nerves were afire as his palm ran along the path of her inner thigh, which he must have felt burning through the thin linen, because his thin lips curved in a movement of delicious satisfaction.

"Lost for words, my Darling girl?"

The sound of that melodious voice darkened with raw wanting caused the blood to rush dizzyingly to her head. Fingers moved higher. Harder. She could not speak. Shards of her falling apart, shattering. Sinking into his skin. His leather-clad thigh moved between her legs. Slow. Sliding. It was too much. Not enough. She was convulsing in his arms. Tight pleasurepain coursing through her veins like poison, and she needed more. She needed –

Arching against him, blinded, daring, she pressed her lips to his, hands buried in the curling mass of black hair. A forbidden name whispered, rolling treacherously off the tongue. _James._

Hook's blue eyes darkened to black. That cursed silver smile cutting through her. A long arm locked around her waist, he pinned her beneath him, her legs instinctively falling open around his hips. Her head fell back, damp curls spilling over her bare shoulders, and she closed her eyes, her body tight with sensation as she felt him _move _against her –

The cabin door burst open.

"Beggin' your pardon, Cap'n, I've - _oh!"_

The snarl that left Hook was barely human.

"What?" he demanded through clenched teeth.

Smee swallowed visibly and it took a few stammering attempts before he could speak. "One of the crew said he saw the young lady out on the deck, and I thought I'd best…"

"Well as you can see, Miss Darling isn't on the deck." The captain's tone could have frozen ice.

"No - no, I s'pose not -"

His embarrassed gaze fell on Wendy, who had retreated across the bed, her face burning, the damp shirt pulled tight around her shivering body. There was no breath in her lungs, no thoughts in her mind… Even now she could feel him on her, all over. Bound by invisible chains. Liquid silver pulsing through her. Throbbing. She did not dare look back at him, at those fatal, forget-me-not eyes. She knew what she would see if she did.

"I'll get the Miss some dry clothes…"

Wendy stood shakily, and it was Smee's arm that held her steady. She clung to it as a cord to her sanity. Blindly, she pushed her way out of the room. To be alone, to be _anywhere _but here –

The last sound she heard was Hook's cutlass thudding into the door where Smee's head had been a moment before.


End file.
